Well, that escalated quickly.

It was very cold after the Feast of Naigha, getting colder over the weeks, and there was snow as high as my knees where it hadn’t been trampled down into hard and slippery ice, so one Day of Mizran Master Merain came to the smithy and we had our lesson in Alyse’s kitchen. She didn’t like that one bit and complained about it, and Layse didn’t like it either but didn’t say anything.

Not that we did anything else than push against each other with our minds, “training our strength,” the master said. I thought I might try to get around him, but he must have heard me thinking because he said “no tricks!” He was so much stronger than us that he floored us every time, me once literally (on my butt on the stone floor, hard), except once when Mialle stood up to him and made him scowl.

“Useless worms, both of you,” he said. “If you weren’t a decent sort of smith I’ll send you to the workshop starting tomorrow. And as for you…” He didn’t tell Mialle what he’d do with her, but turned and snorted and left the house, saying “I’m disgusted with you. I’m skipping tomorrow. Practice on each other.”

“What did he call you?” Layse asked. “And he’s not skipping tomorrow because he’s so disgusted with you, but because there’s an opening party for Master Valyn’s house tonight, it’s likely to run late.”

“And he’ll have too much of a hangover to teach,” I said. “Or to watch us, even.”

It was a pity that the other half of the gate couldn’t be put in its place yet, if there was to be a grand opening! Because with all the ice we could put it outside and it it would slide right down the hill and through the wall and into the river. But it was finished: my big job was done! It felt very strange. Layse said she’d set us to cleaning and repairing all the tools and equipment tomorrow, but now she gave me a bath-house token and told me I had the afternoon off. And Mialle was in the same state: her copper dish was done too.

It was the middle of the day, so the bath-house was very quiet. When we were done scrubbing in the washing room we found Ashti in the warm-water room with the twins. “Ferin! Jalle!” they called, and we got into the water with them. Too bad the water wasn’t deep enough to swim in (though I thought later it might have been deep enough for Arvin) or we might have started the swimming lessons right then.

Ashti said under her breath, as if she was talking to the kids, “you might want to come to dinner tonight, my grandmother makes the best stockfish soup”. And I dunked my head into the water and said behind my hands while I patted my hair dry, “yes, that’s a good idea”.

It turned out that we all went to the temple together, because Mialle and I were helping the children up the hill, carrying them when the footing was very slippery. Perhaps I could make some ice cleats like Ma did! I had time enough for that now.

In the kitchen of the temple we found Layse and Yssa! I’d been wanting to talk to Layse in a safe place forever, but with all those other people there I didn’t really dare. She got in first, though! “I came here to work with Ashti,” she said, “but it’s good that you two are here, I have some questions about your lessons with Master Merain. What else have you been doing than what I saw this morning? Can you defend yourselves? Talk with your minds? Hide?” And we had to shake our heads every time. We’d only learned about seals a bit, but not enough to do anything useful.

“It’s just the show-of-strength thing now?” Yes, that, and obedience. Well, he was the master. But I’d been thinking, and I couldn’t believe that it was right what he did.

“Well. We can all have a lesson together.” And she took us into the temple itself, while Yssa stayed in the kitchen, sewing on what looked like a shroud.

We all held hands in a circle and Layse told us to feel each other’s feelings — that was embarrassing because Ashti and I were next to each other, and Layse swapped places with Ashti and that was uncomfortable for me because her touch stung me! And mine her, too, but not as much, I think. I put Mialle’s hand in Layse’s so she could feel it too. “Is that because you’re with the Nameless?” I asked.

“Anshen,” she said, and then she wouldn’t explain more because, she said, “I’m not here to make you come to our side.”

“What are you here for, then?” I asked, but she said “That’s none of your business.” And of course it wasn’t. But that didn’t make me any less curious.

We did a lot of things that felt like games! Getting into each other’s mind a little way, and I saw what Mialle thought about the shiny stones she’d picked up when we were on our way to town, she’d tested them and there really was gold in them! And she saw what I thought when I was awake in the night and dreamed of pale round buttocks.

And then Layse thought of a word and thought it to Ashti, and Ashti to Mialle, and Mialle to me. Mialle was a lot better than me at that. We did it each standing in a corner of the temple, too, so we couldn’t touch, and Mialle was still a lot better than me. “Practice,” Layse said, “weren’t you going to practice on your own tomorrow?” Sure we were, and it was almost certain that Master Merain wouldn’t be watching.

“Now let’s do it with feelings!” Ashti said, and what I got from Mialle (and Mialle from Ashti) made a certain part of me rise up without me being able to do anything about it, and it made the blood rise in my face. “I don’t need to feel that,” Layse said, “I can see it! Enough. Time for soup.”

And yes, it was the best stockfish soup.

Later, when we were walking home, Layse and Yssa said, “You could bring them a sack of peas or something occasionally, it wouldn’t be payment for the soup, that’s what the Temple lives on. They’re really poor. It’s not like they ask money for funerals and things, people give them what they can spare and we can spare some.” And that was clear even in their kitchen: none of the bowls and spoons and pans matched!

The next morning we were in Mialle’s workshop’s kitchen to practice — they did all their own housework now, Valeyn Valyn had gone to live with her mother in the big house. We had to do some of the pushy stuff or Master Merain would notice, but that was much less horrible because we were about equally strong, Mialle a bit quicker and I a bit stronger, just like with our bodies only not so big a difference. But half the practice we did the thinking-to-each-other thing and we really got the hang of it.

The rest of the winter we went to eat at the Temple of Naigha practically every day of Mizran, and we brought sacks of peas and jars of pickled cabbage and mustard. When first Mialle and then I took to snaring rabbits on the hill with some of the other apprentices (Mialle’s snare caught a little roe-deer instead by accident, and they asked our workshop to dinner to eat it, and it was delicious!) I brought them my first two rabbits. The next time Grandmother was making the skin of one rabbit into a stuffed rabbit for little Sidhan! Her doll had fallen into the fire when she wanted to warm it because it was so cold.

And either before or after dinner we got lessons from Layse. It didn’t look as if Master Merain knew what else we were learning, at least he never said anything about it — and of course we didn’t tell him! But it seemed to make the other lessons easier, perhaps because we knew ourselves and our minds better. Not that Master Merain ever showed that he approved, of course. But at least he didn’t call us useless worms any more. Though Layse said he probably still thought of us like that, “all apprentices are useless, they grow into worthless journeymen and those grow into inadequate masters!”

Mialle made some scraps of copper from the workshop into more pins, not enamelled or gilded this time, just with hammered decoration, but still pretty! A dragonfly and a lizard and a cat and more leaves and flowers. She couldn’t sell them before the Feast of Timoine because there was only an apprentices’ and journeymen’s corner in the market on feasts, but she sometimes wore one herself so people could at least see them already.

So it happened that when we came out of the bath-house one Day of Mizran, we met Moryn the woodcarver’s apprentice and he asked us if we’d come for a beer with him. Then he saw the dragonfly. “Ooh, do you have a boyfriend?” he asked Mialle.

“No, I made this!” she said. “Here, have it.” She pinned the dragonfly on his coat. “I can make more.”

“You made it? Oh, I remember, you made the other ones too, with the colours. So the trouble in the watch is your fault!”

We didn’t know about the trouble in the watch, but over a mug of warm spiced beer in a little inn downtown Moryn told us. Eldan was in love with Yssa, and he’d taken her out and given her the butterfly pin, but his mother had other plans for him, and now they were both under house-arrest, each in their own house with a big wall between them! “And now those whole families don’t talk to each other any more, all your fault!”

“Without Mialle he’d have given her something else,” I said, and Mialle said something like it at the same time.

“You’re right,” Moryn said. “Anyway, it’s a good thing someone is making jewelry! There should be half a dozen of you so we can choose when we want something to give to our sweethearts.” Mialle told me that Yssa had said much the same thing!

Then we paid the bill, and saw that Moryn had been carving spoons and knife-handles all the time while we were talking. Beautiful, and I thought I’d buy one if he was in the apprentices’ corner at the Feast because the spoon I’d brought from home was getting old and worn.

Over the next couple of weeks the snow went away little by little, and Mialle came to the smithy to gild the leaves and flowers on the other half of the gate. I don’t know who thought of it first, but while she was doing that I made a cat to catch the mouse and mounted it on studs so it stood out from the gate itself a bit. “Can you gild its eye?” I asked Mialle, and she did.

We’d only just finished when the masters came into the workshop. At last! Master Valyn took Mialle away at once, she didn’t even look at the gilding. But then she’d be able to look at it every day once it was in its place.

“Good work!” Master Rhanion said to me.

“Thank you, Master,” I said.

“That deserves a bonus, I think.” And he gave me a whole rider!

“Thank you, Master,” I said again.

“I’ll put it before the masters’ meeting to make you a journeyman on the Feast of Archan.” Then I could only blush and not say anything.

When the master had gone I found Halla and gave her two shillings. “Your share of the bonus,” I said. I caught Layse’s eye and she winked at me.

Master Valyn and Master Rhanion were across the street now, talking to the two men who we’d seen coming out of the workshop at times to smoke a pipe. We couldn’t overhear anything, but the men looked agitated. I went out in the street and found Mialle there. She was also going to be made a journeyman, but she hadn’t had a bonus! Even though Master Valyn was probably richer than her brother. “Never mind,” Mialle said, “I’ve got the money from the pins anyway!”

I wrote a long letter to Ma with drawings of my gates. I did it in the temple of Naigha for some reason, and Ashti kept distracting me by pointing out spelling mistakes — a real schoolteacher! But I got it written and rolled it up and bound it up with a bit of string before Layse arrived to give us another lesson.

The Feast of Timoine was almost there. Most of the snow was gone, and three people with a hand-cart came to collect the second part of the gate, cat and all. Ayneth went along to adjust the hinges if they needed it. I’d been waiting for this, but now the rest of the afternoon was my own because work was a bit slow at the moment. Just as I thought I’d ask Layse if I could go into town Mialle turned up with nothing to do either. We hung around a bit, Halla as well, and I don’t know how the talk came to hedgehogs but Halla grabbed a handful of nails and fixed them to an old round grater and hammered it into shape a bit and it was a hedgehog! “It’s a boy hedgehog,” Mialle said, “all spikes and sharpness!” And Halla got another nail and put it in a strategic place so it really was a boy hedgehog. “You can gild the pecker,” Halla said to Mialle, “or is gold too expensive?”

“Much too expensive,” she said, “and I have to pay for the gold myself!”

“Let’s hang it on the wall with the other showpieces,” I said, and we did that, and then I went to ask Layse if we could go out after all. She nodded absently, she was doing the accounts.

“Where shall we go?” Mialle asked.

“To the place we went with Moryn? I don’t want to go to the Underground because I don’t feel like meeting Jichan. He brags about the Guild so.”

Not only that, but I didn’t want to talk about the Guild, I was getting confused! I’d tried to ask Layse about the other Guild again, and all she’d said was “when you choose at your trial it’s not about the Guilds, but about the gods,” and given me and Mialle a piece of paper with the other Second Invocation on it to read aloud, so we’d know it if we needed it. Apart from the name that was hard to say it wasn’t even all that different! Though the Nameless’ version was more about protecting and Archan’s version about fighting. (And I lay awake for a while that night thinking it over.)

We didn’t make it to the inn, because when we passed Master Valyn’s house we found Ashti there, arguing with a man who looked like a high-up servant through the gate. “It’s not my responsibility,” the man said, and Ashti said, “the Feast is for all children and I won’t let myself be turned away again like at Master Rhanion’s house! If it’s your mistress’ responsibility, go and get her!” The man stuck out a hand, right past the butterfly –I should have made that bigger after all!– and pushed her so she fell into the mud.

We picked her up. She was too angry to speak, and almost to walk, but we got her to the temple. Her grandmother gave her twopence from a battered old purse, “go and have a beer,” and when I said I was treating anyway to celebrate my bonus she said she didn’t approve of Ashti being treated by just any young man. I wasn’t just any young man! But I didn’t say that.

The place where we’d been with Moryn had good enough beer but it was hardly a place to take a priestess, so we ended up in a posher place. Ashti had pulled herself together a bit, though it was clear she was still boiling inside. She took cautious sips of her beer, not used to it at all! I ordered a plate of bread and cheese –Ashti had said she couldn’t eat anything but it wasn’t good to drink and not eat, especially if you’re not used to it. And later we got a large pie, brought by a boy who said “Hi, teacher! Are you allowed to drink beer today, is it for the Feast?” And then I realised that the Feast was tomorrow and we still hadn’t got a plan for the workshop. Well, that would have to wait until we were home, or at least not in a busy inn.

The girls were talking about women’s things now, so I talked to the boy, “are you going to be an innkeeper or do you want to learn something else?” He wanted to go to sea, “but Mother won’t allow me, she says it’s too far away and too many people don’t come back.”

Then we found that Ashti was fast asleep, even though Halla had cleverly poured beer from her mug into ours every time she wasn’t looking. I paid the bill — twelve mugs of beer at twopence each, two shillings for the bread and cheese and six for the pie, that made ten shillings, half my bonus or all of an apprentice’s feast money! But it was for a good cause. And I took the part of the pie that we hadn’t eaten with me, because after all I’d paid for it.

We got Ashti to the temple and in bed. “Mummy is sleeping!” Sidhan said. “Yes,” I said, “someone made her angry, and being angry makes you tired, and being tired makes you want to sleep!” She nodded, and then got interested in the pie. “It’s peppery,” I said, but she didn’t mind and neither did her brother. When they were eating and not listening, we made our plan.

“I could lift the door out of the hinges,” I said, but that would probably get me such a beating that I wouldn’t be able to sit on my butt until the Feast of Archan, if I had a butt left to sit on! So we’d have to be more clever.

“Didn’t you want to bring the children cider on the Feast of Naigha?” Mialle asked me. Yes, but I hadn’t done it because the overseers would have drunk it anyway! “Exactly, what if we give them cider with a lot of apple brandy, and they drink it and pass out so we can open the door?”

That seemed to be the best plan; and Mialle got two jugs of spiked cider, “that was expensive, but it’s almost half-and-half”, which smelt exactly like any other cider, a bit like autumn and a bit like a stable. We put it at the workshop door at dusk with a note “For the feast” and sure enough the two men came out with their pipes, saw the jugs, opened them and started to drink!

Mialle and I were up before dawn to see what would happen. The two men were lying in front of the workshop, snoring. Ashti came and tried to open the door, but it was locked, and she banged it so hard that the men woke up and came at her, one with a knife. I was already halfway across the street when Ashti called “Ferin, help me!” and ran to stand behind me.

There were two of them and only one of me, but I tried to trip the one with the knife because he looked most dangerous, while striking out with my fist at the other one. I got him in the stomach, and he promptly fell on his knees to vomit, so I could fight the man with the knife.

I missed him, I’m not used to fighting two at once, but he slipped on a bit of mud or old snow and fell on his front. On top of his knife.

The other one was crawling up, so I took him by the arms, and found out that he was about as big and strong as me so I could only just hold him off. From the corner of my eye I saw Ashti turn the other man over, go pale, and start to say prayers.

Now there were plenty of other apprentices and journeymen, attracted by the noise. My man tried to get away, and after a while he managed to break loose and ran in the direction of the bridge, Mialle and some others after him.

I turned back to Ashti and the man with the knife. “He’s dead,” she said, “can’t do anything about it. You must get away, they’ll hang you for it!”

“I only wanted to get his knife,” I said, and then Layse and Yssa were there and carried the dead man into the coppersmith’s workshop, and pushed me in as well, “nobody must see you now”.

“Why would they hang me?” I asked, “I didn’t kill him, it was an accident! He practically killed himself.” But the town bosses would want to hang someone, and I’d been closest, even fighting the man!

Someone brought Ashti’s mother, with a shroud, and the two priestesses set to work doing priestess stuff, cleaning the body and saying more prayers over it. And they found something: a heavy gold ring on a leather thong around the man’s neck. There was a bear with a crown carved in the stone, and none of us knew whose device that was, but we could all see that there was dried-up blood inside the ring as if someone had cut it off a finger.

Then Layse came back — she’d opened the workshop door with a hammer so Halla could take the children out; Mialle had wanted to do it but she’d started her courses a week ago, for the first time, so she couldn’t any more — and recognised the stone: it was the queen’s device! “Did someone cut off the queen’s finger?” I asked, and tried to figure out if it was a man’s or a woman’s ring, but it was too small for me and too big for Ashti so it could be either. “Not the queen, I think, but her envoy,” Layse said. “Bad enough.”

“So she must have got the letter!”

“Which letter?” And then, of course, I had to tell that Halla and I had written the queen a letter about the children who didn’t go to school and tried to send it to Valdis by Halla’s cousin in Relsinay.

“You have to leave town,” Layse said, “the whole region in fact, even if we can make them believe that the other man killed him, they can’t get him and they can easily get you. Hm, where would you go, Valdis seems safest.”

“Then I might as well go to the queen myself and take the ring!” I said.

“That’s a good idea,” Layse said.

“Shall I wash the blood off?”

“No, don’t do that, it’s better to have the blood on to show what happened. Wrap it in a scrap of linen or something.” But Yssa had something better: a tiny soft leather pouch.

“If I get to the queen, can I tell her you’ve helped me?” I asked Layse.

“Sure,” she said. “I have no secrets from Her Majesty!”

It was a while before I realised that Ashti was coming with me. Not because of me, but because she wasn’t safe either.

“You can’t hang priestesses of Naigha!” I blurted out.

“You can,” Ashti’s mother said, “when they’re responsible for someone’s untimely death.”

“Even if it’s not true? And even if they’re bad people?”

“Naigha doesn’t care,” the priestess said, “good or bad, everyone is equally welcome.”

“But I’m taking my children!” Ashti said, and that caused an argument between her and her mother, and her mother won. “They’re staying with me,” she said, “they’ll be safer than on the road with you. You can come back for them when it’s quieted down a bit here.”

I’d been completely prepared to say that Ashti was my sister and that Sidhan and Arvin were my niece and nephew! But of course I could still say she was my sister.

“Better to say she’s your brother,” Ashti’s mother said, and there Ashti was in breeches and a shirt and a quilted jacket that must have come from one of the chests of spare clothes in the temple, and her hair was brushed out from the braid and hanging loose over her shoulders, and somehow that made look her very boyish. “My brother Doran,” I said, “that’s my Da’s name, I won’t forget it. And if your hair hangs in the soup, you can tie it back like my cousin Jilan does, he’s got hair almost that long! Well, he did when I left home.”

There were clothes for me too, because I couldn’t wear anything I’d made myself here, there might be someone who recognised it. Definitely not my green leather jacket! I was growing out of that anyway. Halla or Faran could have it as far as I was concerned. Except the rider in the seam, that belonged to Mialle!

It looked as if Mialle was trying to decide what to do. Go with us, or stay? She hadn’t been involved. But Layse said she must go too, because people would think (and probably be right) that they could use her to find me.

“What about Master Merain’s sign?” I asked. “Can’t he find us by that?”

“Good call,” Layse said, “we’ll have to do something with it before you leave.” She did something that made the kitchen even more quiet than it had already been. I wanted to learn that!

“I can do one of two things,” Layse said, “hide it, or remove it. Hiding it is more dangerous for you, because when you’re out of my reach you’ll still be in Merain’s, even though you’ll probably be too far away for him to catch up with you in a day.”

“Mernath probably has even more reach,” I said.

“Ooh, not so disrespectful! Grand Master Mernath.” But she was grinning. “He’ll probably be able to find you anyway, hidden or not. I doubt if even he can reach to Valdis, though. And there are plenty of people who can keep you safe. — Removing it is more dangerous for me, because if it goes only such a little bit wrong Merain will recognise me and my life will be forfeit. But the queen’s mother sent me here and I accepted with the understanding that I’d be in danger of my life.”

“I want to get rid of it,” I said, and Mialle was in two minds at first but then she said the same thing.

“You’ll have a scar,” Layse warned, “and if you go to the temple of Archan in Valdis people will be able to see that. It’ll show that you once had this mark, all your life.”

“What about the temple of the Nameless?” I asked.

“For a smith, you think a lot round the corner,” Layse said. “The Order of the Sworn of Anshen won’t care one bit what scars you have, what you’ve been through, or even who is after you, they’ll just protect you if you need protection.”

She took a knife and held it in the fire until it was red-hot. “Shirts off,” she said, and when she came towards me with the knife I could see that it was burning with power as well as with heat. I expected it to burn me — it couldn’t be worse than the time that a bar of iron I was hammering into shape seemed to get a mind of its own and laid itself along the length of my forearm — but it was only a little nick, and Layse pulled out something that looked like a handful of spider-web and threw it in the fire. Then she did the same to Mialle.

“That went right,” Layse said. and we all let out the breath we’d been holding. “Yssa and I will divert the masters as long as we can.”

“They mustn’t hang you!”

“No, we’ll talk ourselves out of it, don’t worry. If we’re lucky Rhanion and Valyn will be the ones hanged.” But I couldn’t help worrying. Now Mialle got new clothes, too, and a knife that I recognised as one that Ayneth had made –I had my own– and we packed as much food as we could scrounge from both kitchens, bread and apples and half a hard cheese, and a small pack of our personal things that weren’t clothes, and all the money we could call ours, including what Mialle was saving to buy materials.

Then everybody was discussing how to get to Valdis. First we’d have to get to Gulynay, and probably take a boat there. I didn’t want to go through Relsinay, “they know me there, I knocked out someone who turned out to be big there,” and Yssa said that would get me respect, but it would also make people remember me and I didn’t want to be remembered! There aren’t many very young men my size with smith’s scars on their arms.

We could go to Gulynay through the wood, but that would be hard in winter, it was quicker on the road and much quicker if we could get on a wagon.

“There’s the tannery ferry,” Ashti said, “they know me there, and I trust them. We can go around, and catch a wagon after it’s left Relsinay. But it’ll have to be after dark.”

So we waited. And Mialle told us that she’d heard the town guard talk to the bridge guards, who had let the fleeing man through because he’d pushed through, no use running after him if he was so eager to get to the girls on the Feast! But it had been strange that he’d been alone and so early in the morning, there had always been the two of them, out at sunset and back at midnight, except the time about four or five weeks ago when they’d stayed out the whole night. As if the girls in Relsinay were that special!

That must have been when they caught and killed the queen’s envoy. Any letter from the queen was probably at the bottom of the river along with the envoy’s body.

When night fell Ashti took us up the hill behind the workshops and down the other side, to where the tanneries lay along the water. She knocked on a door and a youngish man opened. “It’s you!” he said, “you look a sight!” But she got it into his head that we needed to cross, safely and secretly, he was to tell nobody at all about it. (And she gave him a small purse as well to buy his silence, I think.)

The man took us through a long corridor to a courtyard full of barking dogs. “Shut up!” he shouted, and they did shut up! The stink was incredible and it made me cough. “You’re probably used to it,” I said.

“What? Oh, the smell. Good strong manly scent.” And then we got on a flat boat that was moored among piles of hides, or rather, there was a rope tied to the front and the back that went round a post on each side of the river, so when the tanner pulled the free side of the rope it pulled the boat away from him. The boat was so flat and shallow that our breeches got wet, and we couldn’t put our packs down, but we got to the other side of the river, between more piles of hides. Ready for whatever was coming next.

(Oh, and Ashti told me she wasn’t pregnant. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved. Relieved, I think, we don’t know what it’s going to be like to run away to Valdis and it would be an extra complication.)

 

Halla and I got the letter done, and on the day of Mizran Mialle and I — Halla really didn’t want to come — were going to take it to Relsinay. I put the letter under my cap because I wasn’t going to let anyone see I had it before I needed to give it to someone! It was easy to go over the bridge, lots of people were going over the bridge but we saw nobody we knew, except one of the bridge guards, I think Coran, who spoke to us but we promised we’d be back.

There was a busy market on the other side, but it didn’t look as if it was the kind of market where people went to buy vegetables or clothes or pots and pans, but more like a cattle market only without cattle, men and women talking to each other about loads and shipments and prices. And we hadn’t been in the crowd for a count of ten before a girl came up to me and showed me her tits and said she wanted a kiss.

“I don’t kiss strange girls,” I said, and then she thought Mialle was my girlfriend and made me blush and Mialle scowl. The girl tried to grope me and I tried to push her off and then she ran away and I didn’t have my purse! Not that it was a big loss, there wasn’t more than about sixpence in it, but I was angry anyway and I ran after her but when I thought I’d got her she was already away and I fell headlong in the mud. My cap came off but Mialle picked it up, letter and all, before someone else could make away with it.

We were trying to find someone we thought we could trust with the letter but nobody looked like we could trust them! Then Mialle had the bright idea to find an apprentice, someone about our age, who would probably know people, and know who was trustworthy! But while were trying to do that, a big lout grabbed Mialle and tried to kiss her. I punched him off her, but not without everybody looking at us. Mialle had already found a corner out of the way and I pushed through the crowd to find her there. I was getting serious second thoughts about coming here! But there was nothing for it, we were here already. With the letter burning in my cap. I was so glad I’d put it there and not in my purse!

But then we got to a wainwright’s yard where a boy was working who looked okay. He looked a bit like Halla, pale and mousy, and when I said that it turned out that he was her cousin, Jarn! “I’ll give your letter to someone who is going to Valdis,” he said, “for a beer or a kiss!”

“I’ll buy you a beer,” Mialle said, because of course I didn’t have money for beer any more.

“I’d give you a kiss if I thought you’d want it,” I said, and that was safe, because I’d seen him making eyes at Mialle but not at me.

“I’ll do it for the beer,” he said, “come to think of it, I’ll just do it, I wouldn’t have done it for a stranger but you know Halla.”

“Well, next time we see you we’ll buy you a beer anyway,” I said, because next time I’d probably have some money again! I gave him the letter and he put it away in his shirt and we left Reshinay as soon as we could. We did go to the market for a while so we’d be able to say we’d been to the market, and I sort of cleaned my front in a horse-trough but it didn’t get much cleaner, I’d have to wash my shirt and breeches later.

… And then we each felt a hand on our shoulder. It was Master Merain.

“Where have you been? And how did you get so muddy?” he asked.

“A girl stole my purse in the market and I fell into the mud when I tried to catch her,” I said. The truth!

“You have been to Relsinay,” Master Merain said. “What were you doing there?”

“We wanted to know what it was like,” I said. “But it’s not a place where we’ll want to go again.”

“I shall have to tell your masters.”

Okay, that meant a beating, I could bear that. At least the letter was on its way. If Master Merain had known about that he’d surely have mentioned it.

And yes, I did get a beating, and I got sent to bed without my supper (and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so I was really hungry!). But when I woke in the night there was a little basket of bread next to me, and a jug with a check cloth over it. Someone had taken pity on me! I thought it was Alyse but the cloth was stuck on the jug with what looked like power, anie, and Alyse couldn’t do that. It was hard to pry off, but I did it, and found the jug full of beer! Then I heard some giggling behind the curtain, and I moved very softly so I wouldn’t wake Laran and shook the curtain because there was no way to knock on it, and asked “what’s so funny?” but got no answer.

I drank the beer and ate the bread, and went back to sleep, and when I woke up I was stiff but otherwise all right. Master Merain had to give a lecture about obedience, of course, and I resolved right then that I’d learn to hide myself from him.

(“Who are you going to learn that from?” Mialle asked when I told her. “From me,” I said, but I didn’t know how. Perhaps I’ll have to ask Layse. I still wonder whether Master Merain has seen the patch that Layse put on his seal on me, but I didn’t dare ask him, I’m too scared that I’ll give Layse away, and she may be of the Nameless but she’s a good person and I don’t want her killed for doing good things! It must be her who gave me bread and beer, can’t be anyone else.)

There were some more ordinary days, and then it was the day before the Feast of Naigha and half of my gate was finished! We’d borrowed Mialle to do the delicate leaves, and Ayneth had made the hinges, and Halla had filed the burrs off, and of course Layse had been overseeing it all the time and told me where to strengthen the structure with crossbars (which I immediately disguised as branches and vines) but most of the work was mine. I blacked it carefully (getting myself so black that I needed to ask Alyse for a bath-house token), and then someone came to take it away in a cart and hung it in place. He came back and told me that it fit exactly!

“If only Master Rhanion would be in the workshop more often. I’m of a mind to recommend you for journeyman for this,” Layse said. “How long have you worked with your mother at home, before you came to town?”

“Ever since I could walk, I suppose,” I said, “Ma had me making nails when I was eight, I couldn’t lift the big hammer before that.”

“Hm, if we count that with your apprenticeship you’ve even got the years. And your friend next door is making work that would be almost a masterpiece in different circumstances, too. Well, off to the bath-house with you, get the blacking off.”

When I came back from the bath-house I had to pass Master Valyn’s new house to see how the piece of gate fit! Master Rhanion was there too and even he said “good work, lad!”

It did look good, even better now it was in place than it had been in the workshop. And now I could work on the other half knowing that would fit too.

Then Ashti was suddenly next to me, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said.

“It’s not exactly regular, but — it’s the Feast tomorrow, and — could I come and visit you tonight?”

Me? The priestess of Naigha visiting me? I didn’t know what to say, and I think I said really stupid things, like “I suppose you know what to do because I don’t”, and “why me?”

“I like you,” she said, “and my children like you. You know, my first Feast as a priestess I was no older than you are now, and the year after that I got pregnant with the twins! Arvin is going to live with his grandfather, I think his father is dead, at least he went missing in the war.” She sounded a bit sad, I think more about Arvin going away than about his father being dead or missing.

“Will he still be around this summer so I can teach him to swim?” I asked, and yes, he would, anyway the grandfather lived in town too so I could teach him even when he didn’t live in the temple any more. It was just like having a kid brother!

When I got home everybody already seemed to know it and teased me about it, except Alyse who said “I’ll make a guest room ready for you!” Better than the apprentices’ attic with everybody looking on. They were teasing me already, “you’re one of the lucky ones, she’s only slept with a man four times in her entire life!” “Well, that’s four times more than I have,” I said, and of course that made everybody laugh at me.

It was already late when we heard a knock on the back door. And there she was, and I took her upstairs into the guest room. Alyse hadn’t only made the bed with clean linen sheets and put out washing water and clean towels, but there was also a jug of wine (wine!) and a plate of little pasties. I was so glad I’d been to the bath-house! Even though there probably still was some blacking behind my ears. At least I smelt clean.

Well, she did know what to do. There was some fumbling and blushing, all mine, but we laughed about it, and once I got the hang of it it was a lot of fun! Then we washed each other and got between the sheets and we must have fallen asleep because we woke up later and had some more fun.

“Now I’ll have to be off soon,” Ashti said, “should be back at the Temple before sunrise!” I knew it was morning by the sounds from the kitchen but it wasn’t even beginning to get light yet. We washed again — Alyse knocked on the door softly and there was a jug of warm washing water! — and got dressed and found everybody in the kitchen, grinning. Even Mialle and Lochan and Yssa from next door, and Jichan the potter! Of course most young people liked Ashti a lot because they’d been at school with her and I think she was a good schoolmistress. (And anyway, what’s not to like about Ashti?)

Ashti polished off a slice of pie and wiped her mouth and smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said, “that was nice!” And she was gone. I think I said thank you to her too.

Jichan slapped me on the back. “I saw her coming and I hoped it would be for me!” he said. “But good for you. I’m not going to ask you to tell everything, but was it fun?”

“Sure,” I said. That, at least, I was sure about!

I got more pie, and more beer, and more teasing, Then we cleaned the workshop really quickly, because today was the Feast itself and we could all go into town to the market. There was a special place where apprentices and journeymen could sell the work they’d made, and Mialle actually had things to sell: five enamelled copper brooches she’d made to learn enamelling. A flower, a leaf, a butterfly, a wonderful blue kingfisher, and a hedgehog with a winky green eye. And we all had money even without selling anything, because Alyse gave us our ten shillings for the Feast. I didn’t have a purse to put it in, but I tied it in a scrap of linen and bought some leather in the market to make a new purse.

Mialle was having success with her brooches! She’d sold two already when I found her in the apprentices’ corner, and I gave her a shilling for the hedgehog because it was almost exactly like the hedgehog on my gate, but she gave it back at once. Because she was selling them for lots more money than Yssa had said she could ask, so she could afford to give this one away. I’m keeping it for when I get a girlfriend!

A boy a bit younger than us, of a very rich family (he had a bodyguard with him, a woman with a big sword) gave her ten shillings for the flower, and took a lot of time explaining why it was worth that much: the copper, and the enamel, and her work-time (not worth a lot because she was still an apprentice), and more than that because when you buy something you always pay more than it’s worth, whoever made it has to make some money or they’ll starve to death. No wonder he was going to Ildis to the trade school, he was plenty clever enough for that.

And a rich woman bought the kingfisher but she wanted it gilded! Now Mialle would have to learn to gild, but Yssa was going to teach her that anyway.

At the end of the day we all piled into our kitchen for Alyse’s pea soup. Mialle gave most of her earnings to Yssa to put away safely, and she gave me one silver rider to keep for her, so I went upstairs and sewed it into the lining of my green leather jacket that I wear only at feasts anyway and folded the jacket and put it at the bottom of my trunk, where it always is when there’s not a feast.

But the children in the knife workshop were still working, and they’d worked all day, no feast at all for them! I was tempted to go and bring them a pitcher of cider but they had an overseer and it was likely that the overseer would drink it all. “If that’s not different by the Feast of Timoine, I’ll go and complain to someone about it!” Lyase said, but nobody knew who to go and complain to. Well, there was a letter on its way.

The next day was an ordinary working day, of course. I was already preparing for Master Merain, but he appeared late and seemed distracted and said that Mialle wasn’t coming because she had some important work to finish, and anyway the masters’ meeting for the feast had run very late, so he’d postpone the lesson for today. Well, I didn’t mind one bit! A whole day of working on my own things, without interruption, so Halla and I got the frame of the second half of the gate made.

Well, I’ve been here in Nalenay for nearly a year and a half now, and lots of things have happened! Lochan had been right about the Left Hand Inn but he took pity on us and showed us where apprentices can get a beer, called the Underground, and it is underground, in a cellar! It’s always damp and dark and smelly but the beer is cheap and not bad, and twopence will get you a bowl of hot soup with a piece of bread. So that was where we mostly went if it wasn’t any sort of weather to be outside.

Both of our masters had become richer. And fatter, and better dressed, and higher-up in the temple of Mizran (I could see that by Master Rhanion’s stole, he now had one that was longer and wider and with more embroidery, some gold thread on it as well). We thought it was because of the folding knives, because there was a new workshop on the burnt plot, sort of like a shed, full of kids our age and younger who did nothing but put knives together all day! I don’t know who made the blades, it wasn’t our workshop! And Mialle’s workshop wasn’t making the copper springs either.

The masters weren’t in the workshops much any more. Layse handled our workshop mostly, and she gave us apprentices more interesting work to do than Master Rhanion had! There were two new apprentices too, Laran and Halla, who did all the slog-work that I’d started with.

Layse had found out that I was good at the decorative work, firepots and screens and candle-sconces and such, so I did a lot of that. And Ayneth was good at things that needed to be sharp, or fit well, so she made knives and chisels and hinges.

And now Master Valyn was having a new house built downtown, where all the high-up people lived, and she was commissioning a gate for it! Because she wanted to keep people out, but still wanted them to see her beautiful garden, the man said who came to order the gate. And I got to make it! I showed him some almost-finished things I’d already done, that were hanging on the wall, and he thought I was the right man for the job. (I’m big enough that I don’t look as if I’m not quite thirteen yet, that helps, and if I keep my mouth shut as much as possible people don’t notice that my voice is still breaking very badly.)

It was to be with flowers, like the fire-screen I’m most proud of that still needs etching on the leaves and polish all over, and Halla or Laran can do the polish but not even Ayneth can do the etching, Layse will have to do that herself or we must wait for Master Rhanion to come back. “Two pieces?” I asked the man. “Mirror image?”

He had to think about that. “No, make the halves different.” He made a quick sketch on a blank part of the whitewashed wall with the measurements next to it. I took the charcoal from him and sketched in a lily with a butterfly over it, and a sunflower with a bee. “That will be pleasant,” the man said. He had a strange way of speaking, as if he was from somewhere far away, but he looked like an ordinary person, not some kind of foreigner.

When he was gone Layse told me to get my materials ready, and I asked her if I could have Halla to help me carry the bar-iron, because the bars were longer than I was tall and I’d need a lot. That was all right, and Layse told Halla that she should be pleased because she was assisting in important work! Well, if I got her as my assistant anyway she could pull the bellows for me and hold the tongs when it came to putting the frame together.

Halla was a chatterbox, but I didn’t mind because the work was just hauling heavy iron bars, not anything we had to keep our minds on. (So much not that I invented a mouse and a hedgehog to put at the bottom of the gate halves while we were at it.) “I’m so angry about that workshop across the street! My best friend works there and she never gets a half-day off like us. And yesterday Priestess Ashti came to look at it and she went away all angry!”

Then Jichan from the potter’s workshop poked his head over the half-door and asked “Hey Ferin! Are you coming along for a beer? My treat.”

“One moment,” I said, “got to finish this.” But it was near the end of the day, and Layse had just gone out with Yssa from next door, and anyway she was never difficult about leaving early as long as the work got done. When it was done, Jichan was back and he had Mialle with him. “I don’t want to see another leaf or apple or grape!” she said, and told us about the huge copper bowl she was making, leaves and fruits all over. She got as much of a free hand with it as I did with the gates! “Are you putting worms in some of the apples?” I asked, but no, she wanted it to be perfect.

“We’re going for the grain, not the grape,” Jichan said, and took us to the Underground. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” he said. “Or rather, who would like to meet you.” He made it sound so mysterious that I got suspicious. “As long as we’re not going to do anything illegal,” I said.

“Oh no, this is perfectly above board, you’ll see. He’s someone I’ve been learning from, things you can learn too. I can do this already!” And Jichan cupped his hands and looked as if he was thinking hard, and lifted the top hand and there was a little ball of light in it! “I’ve been in the Guild of Archan for a year now,” Jichan said. “Master Mernath will tell you everything.”

When we got to the Underground there was man sitting in a corner who didn’t look like he belonged there. He was surely a master! Old enough to be someone’s grandfather and better dressed than Master Rhanion on Temple days. And I thought I’d seen him somewhere he didn’t look so much out of place.

“Good afternoon, Master,” I said.

The man gave me a friendly smile. “Sit down, sit down,” he said, and called to the innkeeper, “Bring us four of the best. The best, mind you.”

We sat down. I felt as if everybody was looking at us, or at least at the master, but people didn’t even seem to notice! “So,” the master said, “I suppose Jichan here has already told you part of why I invited you today.”

“Only that it’s about the Guild of Archan,” I said. “And that we can learn things.”

“You certainly can. Tell me, do you find your current work easy?”

“Not always easy,” I said, “but I think I’m good at it, I’m going to make the wrought-iron gates for Master Arlyn’s new house.”

“That’s an honour,” the master said. “Well, what you can learn in the Guild won’t always be easy either, but I promise you that it’s something you can become good at, too. Both of you.”

“You mean we have gifts?” Mialle asked. “Other than smithing gifts, of course.”

“Definitely! Have you never seen things other people didn’t see?”

I told him about the man with fire in his hands in Ilsinay, and the fight with the king’s soldier. “That soldier was of the Nameless!” I said. “Does the king even allow that?”

“Our king is a broad-minded man,” Master Mernath said. “You saw fire in that man’s hands, and power being used in the fight? Did you see that too?” he asked Mialle.

“Yes,” Mialle said, “but not as well as Ferin saw it.”

The master nodded and ordered another round of beer. I’d drunk the first one without even noticing! But a sip from the next mug told me that it was really the best, I’d never had such good beer in the Underground or anywhere else. And now he also ordered food. I fumbled in my purse to see if I had any money left and found threepence and despaired, but the master said not to bother, he was paying! “I’m not a grand master in the Guild for nothing,” he said, “we can afford to feed new apprentices!”

Then we didn’t talk much for a while because there was soup, and bread, and a dish of roast turnips, and a dish of roast chickens! I didn’t even know the Underground had chickens to roast, I’d never seen better meat than trotters there, and the pork belly in the soup.

And there was more beer. Master Mernath wanted to know about the knife workshop, but I didn’t know more than Halla had said and Mialle only knew that it was there. “I’d appreciate it if you kept an eye on it,” he said, and of course we would.

He said a lot more things, how Archan had given us the gifts and He expected us to use them to serve Him, which would also benefit us, and the servants of the Nameless who had gifts squandered them in inconsistency. Or something like that. I didn’t understand half of what he was saying.

If we started learning, he said, we’d be tested, and then we’d have to choose which side we were on — it didn’t matter where we learned the first things, it was the same things anyway, not like learning to be a smith or a carpenter — but who in their right mind would choose the Nameless? We were just because Archan is the patron of justice, and we kept to the rules and those of the Nameless didn’t, they made up rules as they went along.

“But why didn’t we know about all of this?” Mialle asked, “it’s not a secret, is it? It’s about Archan!”

“We have to be very careful, the runners of the Nameless are everywhere.”

I didn’t know anybody who was of the Nameless! Well, that soldier. And I suddenly remembered Layse praying to the Nameless when I’d just arrived. But I didn’t tell Master Mernath about that. “Runners?” I asked. “You mean spies?”

“You can put it like that, yes. They might be a soldier, a trader, anyone at all. This part of the world here is of Archan so they are under cover, but in Valdis our temple is hidden in the middle of a block of houses.”

“Is there a temple here, then?”

“Yes, in the Guild house,” Jichan said. “The master took me there when I became a journeyman, to confirm me before Archan. You are barely apprentices, you won’t get to the temple until much later.” He sounded very smug about that.

Master Mernath even sent Jichan away a couple of times on silly errands because he wanted to talk just to us. He said he’d find us a master to learn from, and the master would come to us, we didn’t have to do any searching ourselves.

“When will we have lessons?” Mialle asked. “We work all day!”

“That depends on when your master is available,” Master Mernath said, “presumably in the evenings, after work, and both your masters are in the Guild themselves so they’ll give you time off for it if needs be.”

That sounded reasonable! But I still wanted to have enough time to work on Master Valyn’s gate.

Then suddenly Layse and Yssa were standing in the doorway! “You two are coming with us RIGHT NOW,” they said. We looked around for Master Mernath, but he’d disappeared, and Jichan as well. “How many beers have you had?” Layse asked.

“I don’t know, seven? But it’s all right, Jichan was paying.”

She cuffed me, hard, on my ear. “Hm. I don’t think Jichan was the only one paying.” The other ear. “And what does that teach you?”

“That five beers is enough?” That earned me another cuff. I could see that Yssa was treating Mialle much the same way.

Layse and Yssa took us outside and into an alley to piss. Layse made a light in her hands, just like Jichan had, only brighter! “So you’re in the Guild too,” I said.

“Which Guild?”

“Of Archan, of course!” I said.

“Come on, you know better than that.”

Yes, I did. “I heard you praying to the Nameless that first evening. But I never told on you!”

“No, you didn’t. If you had I wouldn’t be alive now. I was careless. Well, what did Master Mernath want from you?”

“Can you ask me that when I’m sober?”

“No. When you’re sober you’ll have the wits to tell me only the safe parts.”

So I told her about the promised lessons. “Hm, if he’s cleared that with Master Rhanion I can’t do anything against it. You’ll have to learn anyway, it doesn’t matter much where.”

“Yes, that’s what Master Mernath said, too.”

“I’ll be watching you. We runners are here to make sure that kids like you two don’t get into too much trouble.”

Runners? I’d have to ask her more about that when I was sober. “Yssa, too?”

“She doesn’t have the gift. But yes, we’re friends.”

Then she marched me home and got me into bed and I didn’t know anything until morning. I woke up with the worst headache I’d ever had, and I’d also been puking without noticing! Lucky for Jeran that he’d moved out.

My first job was to clean up, of course. But when I went downstairs for another bucket of water there was a stranger there, a tall man with a little dark beard (though his hair was light, perhaps he rubbed grease and soot into it, it did look shiny) and piercing blue eyes. And Mialle was right behind him.

“You are Ferin?” he asked. “Hm, I was expecting better material.”

I couldn’t tell him about last night! But it turned out that he was the master that Master Mernath had promised. That was why he’d picked up Mialle too.

“I’m Master Merain. First we’ll get all that beer out of you.” And he took us up the hill and made us strip to our loincloths, in the snow, and run to a tree-stump and back, and there and back again, for what must have been half an hour, until we were all sweaty and winded! But sober all right.

“Get dressed,” he said, and while we were doing that, “The body needs to be sound for the mind to be sound. The mind needs to be sound for the gifts to blossom.” I didn’t really understand what he meant by that, but I nodded anyway. “Now, a bath. I can teach you while we’re bathing.”

A bath was exactly what I wanted now! But learning in the bath sounded strange. And Master Merain was looking at Mialle’s tits in a way I didn’t like at all! (Not that she had much to look at yet, but she wasn’t as flat as a boy or a little kid any more.)

When we were about to go into the bath-house Master Merain laid a hand on my shoulder, and the other on Mialle’s, and said “I’m your master now and you are my apprentices.” It felt kind of hot and cold at the same time, and when he took his hand off the feeling didn’t go away. I pulled my shirt away to look but there was nothing to see. Master Merain smiled and said, “That’s my mark on you. Anyone whose business it is will see it.”

In the tub Master Merain asked us what we already knew, and I told him about the man with fire in his hands in Ilsinay. “You saw fire?” he asked. “And you, girl, did you see it too?”

“Not as well as Ferin did,” Mialle said, “but yes, I saw it.”

“What else?” the master asked, but all we’d seen was the fight with the soldier of the Nameless. We knew our masters were in the Guild but we’d never seen them do anything of that kind! And we’d certainly not known that we had gifts ourselves so we could have used them.

“There is power in the world everywhere,” Master Merain said. “Archan has given it to us to use, and to use it well.” Yes, that was what Master Mernath had said, too! “Now look for that power.”

I couldn’t see anything, however much I screwed up my eyes. “With your mind’s eye! Not the eyes of your body.” I didn’t really know how to do that, but then I found a way to sort of look behind my real eyes, and I did see something! It didn’t really look like anything but I could still see it. (And now I could see something on my shoulder as well, an invisible handprint, but I didn’t tell the master that.)

“Good!” the master said. “Now take it into yourself to use.”

That was hard. But if I had a mind’s eye, wouldn’t I have mind’s arms and hands too? I tried to stretch out my hands without moving my real hands, and after a while my body (or my mind’s body, I think) knew what to do and I raked in all the power I could reach. Mialle hadn’t got that far yet but when she saw what I was doing she was clever enough to figure out how to do the same thing.

The water was cold now, there hadn’t been a bath man pouring new hot water in for a while, and our skins were all wrinkly. “Enough,” Master Merain said. “Go back to your work. I’ll teach you six mornings a week, I’ve arranged that with both your masters.” And he was gone, but not before he’d had a good long look at Mialle’s tits again while she dried herself.

“I’ll punch him in the face if he looks at you like that again!” I said. I felt a bit like I was her brother, I’d do the same thing for my sisters! Not that my sisters couldn’t do their own punching, but they were big and strong like me and Mialle only a little thing.

“Don’t do that, hitting a master gets you hanged! Or at least beaten half to death.”

“All right, not when he only looks then. But if he dares touch you I will punch him, I don’t care what happens!”

We passed the pie-shop and the smell made me so hungry! “Say, I’ve got threepence, if you’ve got a penny we’ll get a pie each, and next time you can pay half of mine!” I said. Mialle did have a penny, and we bought turnip and onion pies and were eating them when Lysna and Yssa and the young priestess of Naigha, Ashti, came along, talking. It looked as if all three of them were friends.

“You two look done in,” the priestess said. “Your first bad hangover?”

“Our first lesson from Master Merain, too,” Mialle said, and that made the priestess frown.

“He’s marked them already,” Lysna said. And that made the priestess frown more. “Shouldn’t do that to apprentices.”

“He is a good teacher, though,” Yssa said, “I’ve heard that some of his apprentices could see in one lesson!” And I knew she meant seeing with the mind’s eye, even though she didn’t have gifts herself.

“Yes,” I said, “but he couldn’t keep his eyes of Mialle’s tits!”

Priestess Ashti sighed. “Yes, he’s like that,” she said, “he likes girls your age. Only girls, and he only looks at their tits ever, I’ve never heard of him going any further.”

“If he does I’ll punch him in the face!” I said, but Lysna took me by the shoulder and said, “That mark makes him able to see what you do and hear what you say, when he wants to.”

Well, I didn’t have any problems with Master Merain hearing me say that! But she was right, it would give me problems.

“Let’s talk more in the temple,” the priestess said, “the Nameless doesn’t have any power in there.”

“But does Archan?” I asked.

“That’s what I said, right? No gods have any power in the temple but Naigha.”

I hadn’t been in a temple of Naigha since I left school. There was no school now, perhaps because it was only in the mornings, but the priestess’ little son grabbed me by the leg when we came in and talked to me. “I’m leaving next year!” he said. “My sister can stay, it’s not fair! I’ll run away and fall in the mill-pond and drown!”

“You won’t drown,” I said, “because in spring when it’s warm enough again I’ll take you to the mill-pond and teach you to swim.”

“Really? Can you swim?”

“Like an otter,” I said.

“Otters swim on their back. Can you swim on your back?”

“Sure. I’ll teach you to swim on your back too. And on your front.”

He had to think about that for a moment. “What’s your name?”

“Ferin.”

“Ferin is going to teach me to swim.”

“Yes. You can tell your mother that. It’s a promise.”

He ran away laughing, and I followed the women into the temple. The old priestess was talking to Mialle, I think about women’s things, but Yssa and Lyase and Ashti were talking about the workshop across the street from us, where Halla’s friend worked. “Those children should be in school!” the priestess said. “None of them is older than eleven or twelve, some even as young as eight! And you never see them outside except for a bit in the middle of the day. Of course it’s a good thing to give shelter and work to orphans, but I don’t think they’re learning anything!”

“I don’t think so either,” I said, “they’re only putting knives together. And the pieces don’t even come from our workshops, or I’d know!”

“Do you know more about it?” the priestess asked.

“Only what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard from Halla. Her friend works there.”

“Well, it would be good to know more. Keep an eye open, would you?

I was going to do that for Master Mernath already! “All right, and I’ll ask Halla, too,” I said, “she’s helping me with a piece of work anyway.”

So I did that when she was holding the tongs for me. “How did your friend end up in that workshop?” I asked. “Is she an orphan?”

“I don’t know!” she said. “We only met when she was already working there. I was flying my kite and it got stuck on a roof and she was outside and helped me get it back, and we became friends then! She’s not even from here, she was born somewhere else and came here to work. Can’t remember the name but she talks funny. It’s a pity she doesn’t get any time off, or we could do more things together.”

“Don’t you think she should be learning, like you, not doing the same work all the time?”

“Of course she should! But if she is an orphan it figures that she doesn’t have the apprentice fee.”

“Well, can you ask her when you next meet her? If she’s an orphan, and how she came to live and work here?”

“Sure. It’s not fair!” (She sounded a bit like the priestess’ son when she said that.) “Hey — can you write? Real well?”

“Well enough,” I said, “why?”

“I’m going to write a letter to the queen about it, and I want you to read it and say if I’ve made any mistakes.”

“Let’s write the letter together,” I said. “Do you know how to get it to the queen?”

“We can drop it off at Relsinay,” she said. “That’s where my mother lives.”

Relsinay! Where we were supposed not to go, ever! Well, cross that bridge when we come to it.

Lysna came in then, and put a hand on my shoulder as if she wanted to show “well done” but instead I felt something strange happening, like Master Merain’s mark but different. “What’s that?” I asked.

“A patch,” she said, “I should have done that right away.” I wondered what Master Merain would have to say about that — if she could see his mark, surely he could see hers! But I didn’t ask, and Lysna looked at the work and told us “well done” after all.

I had some gender confusion as a player, because Lesla is persistent, so Ferin, roughly the same age in the first couple of sessions, ended up with some girly manners. Just as I was deciding I might retcon him into a girl after all I thought of a perfectly plausible in-world explanation: he grew up as the youngest in a house full of women, of course he’s got girly manners! Let’s see if the smithy will beat those out of him. (But he’ll probably stay fond of nice fabrics and just a little vain. If he’d been small and weak instead of big and strong, he might have become a tailor instead.)

So there I was in Master Rhanion’s workshop! There were four of us sleeping in the attic, Jeran and I on one side of the blanket that hung in the middle and Ayneth and Layse on the other side. Layse was a journeyman already, the other three apprentices.

I woke up to the smell of pancakes. But Alyse wouldn’t give us any before we’d washed at the pump again. I wet my hair to make it stay out of my eyes. “It’s too long, I want it off,” I said to Jeran, and he said that Alyse had a pair of shears and she’d cut it for me, “on the day of Archan, we get a bath-house token then too”. Well, I’d tie it back for another couple of days, no problem.

Mialle was there too, sent to wash before breakfast, with the coppersmith’s other apprentice, a boy called Lochan. We talked while we washed, “tomorrow is the day of Mizran, then we can go to the market!”

“I don’t even have a penny,” I said.

“If you don’t have a penny and you do want a beer, you have to wait until you’re a journeyman and then you can go to the Left Hand,” Lochan said. “And by that time you’ll probably have a penny too.”

“And what if you do have a penny?” Mialle asked. I knew she had a shilling! Unless she’d had to buy a leather apron from her master too.

“If you do have a penny you still have to wait until you’re a journeyman,” Lochan said.

We had pancakes — enough! — and Alyse gave me a piece of string to tie my hair with, and we settled down for a day full of work. After pulling the bellows all morning I got to sharpen nails with a file, together with Jeran. He did twice as many as I did, he’d probably done it much more often, but I still did four dozen! Then Jeran scowled at his file and asked “is yours getting dull too? Let’s ask if we can sharpen them!” So we went to ask Rhaye, the senior journeyman, and she showed us where to find the steel brush and the crock of strong vinegar to do that with. The master came along when we were at it and said “good work!” and that meant we got more: a whole basket of dull and rusty files and rasps! A woman with a baby on her arm brought them, I think she was the master’s daughter.

It was very hard work, and it left us black all over, so the master gave us each a coin with a hole in, and he gave Jeran two shillings, “go and wash up in the bath-house, and get yourselves something to eat in town!”

On the bridge we found Mialle who was black all over too: she’d been polishing a copper mirror all day. “The polish was pink, why did it leave me all black?” she wondered, but we didn’t know the answer.

Jeran knew where the bath-house was: right on the other side of the town. We went past a big square with some really grand buildings on it: the temple of Mizran, and next to that something that Jeran said was the school, where he’d been until he was twelve.

“Is there so much to learn then, after you can read and write and figure?” I asked.

“Well, I started at ten,” Jeran said with a laugh, “because there wasn’t any school before that! But yes, history and geography and astronomy.” I didn’t know what those things were, well, history was about kings and stuff, but Jeran explained that geography was knowing where places were and what kind of things there were in those places, like cities and forests and rivers, and astronomy was about the stars. And if people stayed at school longer there was more difficult reading and writing and figuring to learn!

Some other buildings were houses of rich people, Jeran said their names but I’ve forgotten, and there was the Guild House with wonderful stone decorations on the front where the Guild of Archan met each week. “The master goes,” Jeran said, “and his sister the coppersmith.” Mialle and I hadn’t known that our masters were brother and sister!

Then we went through a little street where there were three bakeries next to each other — the smell made me hungry! The one in the middle had a sign outside with a pie painted on it and “PIES 2 PENCE, with meat 4 pence” underneath. But we couldn’t eat while we were still dirty, bath-house first.

We passed the Temple of Naigha, where a priestess was shelling peas on a bench outside, watching two little kids playing in the yard. Then a younger priestess came out of the temple-house, I thought she could be the little kids’ mother, and probably the other priestess’ daughter. She recognised Jeran, because she was the schoolmistress!

On a smaller square there was a house with a wooden sign painted exactly like one of Ma’s towels, white with red checks woven in! That must be the bath-house. And yes, it was. “Do you know what to do in a bath-house?” Jeran asked, and we said “wash, of course!” but he was teasing Mialle, saying she had to kiss him first thing. “I don’t want to kiss you or anyone!” Mialle said. “And anyway I’m too young to kiss!”

We got water and soap to wash the grime off, and then more water and soap to wash the rest of the grime off, and finally a large tub that we all fit in together, full of water that was almost warm enough. And towels exactly like the wooden one (but made of linen). Then it turned out that none of us had thought of bringing our clean clothes, so we had to put the dirty ones back on.

Then pie! Jeran went round the counter and grabbed the girl there by the middle and kissed her on the cheek, because she was his sister! The bakery belonged to his family. We paid our twopences — Jeran had both of our shillings but he gave me the tenpence change, it was my shilling after all — and got our pies, but we took them to the back room where Jeran’s parents were, and they gave us beer to go with the pies. Why pay twopence extra for meat, my pie was full of onions and pieces of egg and it was so good!

Jeran and his parents (and his sister when she closed the shop) talked about lots of things in the town that Mialle and I mostly knew nothing about but were interesting enough, and then it was suddenly dusk and Jeran’s parents sent us home. Jeran had to go for a piss first when we got to the smithy — I’d done that behind the bakery — so I crept up the ladder as softly as I could so I wouldn’t wake Ayneth and Layse.

But they were still awake! There was a light behind the blanket, and I could hear someone saying prayers, it sounded like invocations, but they said the name of the Nameless! But then my foot hit the step that creaked and the light went out, and when I was in bed and Jeran had come up too we heard a snore that meant “I’m ASLEEP, you hear, I’m SNORING”.

If I hadn’t been so tired and so full of the baker’s beer (bakers brew the best beer, Jeran’s sister had said) I’d probably have lain awake to think about what I’d heard, but I was asleep at once.

The next day Master Rhanion came into the workshop in really smart clothes. “Where’s my stole?” he asked, and Rhaye got it from a chest. It was an embroidered thing, like a stiff scarf. “You carry it, Rhaye, you’re almost a master anyway. You’re coming with me. The rest of you, clean the workshop, thoroughly, and then you have the rest of the day off. We’re off to a meeting in the Temple.”

That was a lot of time for the market! And I still had tenpence from yesterday’s shilling, too.

When we were done with the cleaning and on our way to the market we met Mialle and Lochan and one of the coppersmith’s two journeymen. We saw other groups of young people going that way, clearly also apprentices and journeymen whose masters had given them the day off!

There was so much to see in the market! (And to smell, and to hear, and to taste if you had money.) But what caught my eyes first was a stall where they had cloth so red as I’d never seen, wonderful thick soft wool, and I wished I could have some of that to make a jacket from to wear at feasts. So after I’d stood there looking at it so long that the others got impatient and moved on, I went and asked what it cost. But it was so expensive that I wouldn’t be able to afford even two yards of it for years! And anyway a woman came and bought the whole bolt for her master.

I caught up with the others, and Jeran knew that they sold cheaper cloth in the other market, and also clothes that people had made and worn already. Well, I could make my own, no problem! There was a place, it wasn’t a stall but a mat laid on the ground with a whole heap of pieces of cloth on it, where I found something that would make a sleeveless vest, a strange corroded-copper shade of green, and when I picked it up it turned out not to be cloth but thin soft leather. All the better, it wouldn’t need hems! And it cost ninepence, however much I tried to haggle (but perhaps I’m not very good at haggling). But now I’ve got something to make up for the next feast and wear over my embroidered shirt when it’s not warm enough any more for the shirt on its own.

Mialle bought a piece of cloth too, a very thin sort of sky blue linen (“it’s from foreign parts,” the seller said, perhaps they’ve got thinner linen there). “Can you sew?” I asked, and yes, she could, or I’d have offered to trade my sewing with her for something.

I had one penny left, and that wouldn’t even buy an onion pie! But we’d had a large breakfast and everything was so interesting that if my stomach grumbled I could ignore it. When we passed the Temple of Mizran again, in the other square, and just then the priests and important people came out in a procession. I could see Master Rhanion and Mialle’s master Valyn, and even Rhaye, who didn’t have any special clothes but she was walking behind Master Rhanion as if she belonged. Jeran told me who some of the people were but it was too much to remember.

When we got home Alyse gave us bread and cheese and boiled eggs and weak ale, and Mialle and the other people stayed too to eat and talk with us. One of the carpenter’s journeymen came in, saying “next time will you take me along?” and he stayed to eat and drink and talk, I understood he was a friend of Layse’s and they were making something together. Jeran was in it too, and Lochan, and soon enough they were talking about springs and wooden handles and grades of steel, all very technical.

Then the masters came home, both quite drunk! And Master Valyn’s husband the tinsmith. Alyse promptly made a lot of tea for them, and for us apprentices and journeymen too.

“Now let’s see what you’ve been up to,” Master Rhanion said, and they brought a knife that didn’t need a sheath because it folded back into the handle! “Layse wanted to make it all of iron,” the carpenter said, “but I knew the handle needed to be of wood!” “And the springs of copper,” Lochan said, “with a bit of tin mixed in so it’s tougher. But not so much that it becomes bronze and it’s all rigid.”

Master Rhanion took the knife and folded it back and forth a couple of times, and tested the edge, then folded it closed and put it in his pocket. “Right,” he said to Layse, “I’ll keep this, and use it for a while, and if hasn’t broken yet on the Feast of Mizran I’ll take it as your masterpiece.” And to Jeran he said, “You have a lot more to learn before you’re a journeyman but I’m keeping this in mind.” And then he and Master Valyn and the tinsmith started talking excitedly about making a lot of these knives if it really proved to work, and selling them in Valdis!

And that wasn’t the only news! The masters were sending Rhaye and Mernath — not only the young master who worked under Master Valyn, but also Rhaye’s sweetheart — to Gulynay to set up a workshop there! Right where the boats went south, so it would be easy to send things to Valdis. And of course, when the workshop started to make money, they’d be able to get married. “I’m going to need a new assistant though,” Master Rhanion said, and to Layse, “chances are it’ll be you, it’s a choice between you and Aidan. Where is that scamp?” And just then Aidan came in, heard the last of the talk, scowled and turned and stalked out.

“That does it,” Master Rhanion said, “I think he’ll have to start looking for another master.”

Prologue. The real campaign will start about two years later.

Hey, I’m going to tell you how I went to town to get apprenticed and met a kid from another village and didn’t join the army.

I’m Ravei Ferin, eleven and a season when this happened, just come from Ashinay where my Ma is the smith. I have sisters. Rava is a carpenter, she just got her journeyman’s letter and married her sweetheart on the strength of that. And Aine has been working at Aunt Alyse’s farm forever but this time Aunt Alyse hung a wreath of flowers round her neck on the Feast of Archan and said she was a full farmhand now, not just a helper. So Ma grumbled because she was going to need two lots of twelve riders, one for me to be apprenticed and one for Aine in case Aunt Alyse wanted her to buy in.

But the Feast was nice! I wore my new embroidered shirt, and my cousin Jilan wore a shirt exactly like it, I’d made both and he’d embroidered both because I sew better and he embroiders better, fair’s fair! We roasted a goat and there was berry pudding and cheese and new peas and apple-wine, and I drummed all night for the dancing. And I’m good at that! When I was seven or eight I already got to stay up at feasts to drum, and that made my sisters angry because they got sent to bed though they’re both older.

Da got in a tussle with a wild boar when I was a little kid and it killed him so at least I don’t have any more sisters. But Ma has Tylse as a journeyman and she’s as bossy as any big sister, so I was glad when Ma gave me the purse and said she’d written a letter to Master Rhanion the blacksmith in town (Nalenay, the town is called, because of the old stone bridge) to take me as an apprentice, and I should go at once and not dawdle and not lose my way. She keeps chewing me out for losing my way once, when I was eight, staying lost for three days because I couldn’t seem to find a track away from the brook and kept coming back to it. Well, at least the brook was full of fish. There are better things to eat than raw fish but at least you don’t starve.

So I went up the hill, past the place that nobody else knows full of wild strawberries, so I stuffed my face and picked as many more as I could hold in one hand for later, because I needed my other hand to climb. It’s much harder to go down that hill than up. And at the bottom of the hill there was this scrawny kid looking unhappy. She hid herself in the bushes when she saw me coming but I’d seen her already when I was scrambling down. I knew why she was unhappy, she looked as dry as dust and the brook there is in a gorge, with a steep slope that’s too hard to go down if you’re not a squirrel or a marten (and even if you are a marten, I saw one plummet down once but it shook itself and ran off, a person would likely break something). So I held out my handful of strawberries and said “want some?” and she looked suspicious but took them, after all strawberries are full of juice!

“Thank you,” she said when she’d scoffed them all, “what do you want from me?” I had to think of something quickly, Ma is probably right when she says I’m way too nice, so I said “do you know which way the town is?”

“That way,” she said, and pointed in the right direction. “Are you going there to be apprenticed too?”

“Yes, with Master Rhanion the blacksmith,” I said. “I’m Ferin.”

“Me, with Master Valyn the coppersmith,” she said. “And I’m Mialle. Ravei Mialle.”

“Don’t tell me your mother is a smith! Mine is, in Ashinay. She’s called Rava too.”

“Yes, she is! In Tal-Polsen.” So that explained the way she talked, as if there was fluff in her mouth.

We walked on for a while, through the boring part of the wood, until we came to the brook that’s as far as I’ve ever been, and if we crossed it I’d be really away from home.

We washed ourselves in the brook first, and I caught a fish that was trying to swim upstream but not getting anywhere much because the stream was going so fast. I gave it to Mialle and she bashed it against the rock to kill it and then cleaned it, while I made a fire to roast it over. This time I had my tinderbox with me so we didn’t have to eat the fish raw. It looked a bit pink when it was done, and it tasted very nice, but then we had to wash again because we were all fishy! And we filled our water-jugs because we didn’t know how long we’d have to walk without another brook. After all this was a place neither of us had ever been.

Mialle picked up some stones from the path because, she said, she liked the way they glittered in the sunlight. I didn’t see anything special about the stones, they weren’t iron-stones or flint or anything, but it was okay as long as she carried them in her own pockets!

Then we got to a clearing and there was a village in it! With people working in the field and all. In the middle of the village there was something that looked like a heap of stones, and we couldn’t see from where we were whether it was something built or just a strange kind of rock, so we went to have a look at it. Then we could see that it must have been made by people, but not what it was for, it was just a heap of stones!

A man came by and asked our business. “We’re going to town to be apprenticed,” we said. And he told us that the village was Ilsinay (at least I know that’s what it’s called but what he said sounded like ‘Ishnay”) and that the heap of stones wasn’t for anything, it was just there, too solid to break up to build things with.

Then I’d finished the thinking I’d started when I first saw there was a village, and asked “Can we do some job for you for a meal and a place to sleep?”

“There’s always the weeding,” the man said.

“All right, or I can haul stuff, or do carpentry if you need that.” I was sure that Ma and Rava taught me enough to mend things in a village, fences and window-frames and cart-poles.

“Carpentry, hmm,” the man said, and he called someone to take Mialle to the field for the weeding and showed me the well that had a little roof over it, on two uprights, with the pulley hanging under it. I could see at once that the uprights and the roof-frame were rotten, and it was missing one of the supports on the side. I thought for a bit, and said “I can fix that. But not on my own and I want two shillings for it.” I didn’t know if two shillings was the right price, but it was too much work to do only for a meal and a bed in the hay!

The man went and talked to a couple of old women sitting in front of a house, and came back, and said “It’s reasonable. You want your buddy to help you? Then you help her in the field first.” That was all right, all I needed was an extra pair of hands, I didn’t care if it was Mialle or the man or one of the old women as long as they could hold things in place for me. But when Mialle and I were finally working on it, it turned out that she knew woodwork! She’d made her own weaving frame, and the roof-frame was the same kind of thing so she could do that by herself (except, of course, that she needed an extra pair of hands too to put it together).

Then there was suddenly a lot of noise! Half a dozen people who looked like soldiers, on horses, with a trumpet and a drum! (A wonderful drum, I wish I could have tried it, and I wish I had one! I can make drums but not like that.)

“Hear, hear, the proclamation of King Athal!” they called, and a woman with more braid on her clothes than the others got off her horse and unrolled a letter she had and read it to everybody. The king was calling for soldiers to go to fight the Emperor of Ashas! Men and women of sixteen and older. I so wanted to go too! As drummer, so I could use the wonderful drum! The other soldiers said all kinds of things too, that they’d go south to Valdis and Essle and Idanyas and Solay “where the brown people come from”. I get brown too, in summer, from the sun, perhaps the sun shone a lot in Solay! And one soldier said that you could get rich in all those places but in Solay there were the prettiest boys! “And the prettiest girls,” another soldier said, and the first soldier said “Yes, but that’s because you like girls and I like boys!”

I put my bit of work aside and stood behind the village people who were signing up. I was big and strong, perhaps they’d believe I was old enough!

“You want to join up?” the woman with braid on her clothes asked when it was my turn. “You’re sixteen?”

I knew I couldn’t trust my voice so I nodded.

“Hm.” She stroked my cheek, then suddenly put a hand down my breeches. “No hair up here, no hair down there. Go back to your master. We only take lads who can get it up.”

I went back to where Mialle was still working on the roof-frame. “They didn’t take you?” she asked. “I don’t want to join the army.”

“I do! Fight for the king and come back rich!” Because I’d heard a soldier say to the other recruits that Ashas was full of gold and that everyone would get their share.

“But your mother sent you to Master Rhanion!”

I shrugged. “I’d have been back before she started worrying.” And then I didn’t talk about it any more, but we finished the work, and put the new roof on the well and the tiles on top, and I got the man to look at it.

“Decent work,” he said, and gave me two shillings, and I gave one to Mialle, “you did half the work, you get half the money!” And the man nodded when he saw that, like he thought it was a good thing.

Then there was food! Nice filling food, and a lot of it. And Mialle and I each got a huge tankard of small beer. The soldiers had made their own fire next to the heap of stones, and it looked like they’d brought their own food too, so we didn’t get to talk to them more, but Mialle had heard that the recruits were going to the camp in Nalenay with all the other recruits from our villages, so she went and asked if we could travel with them. Much safer! And perhaps we could do some little things for them for a share of their food.

I trailed after her, but I didn’t want to be the one to ask the head soldier, not after she’d shamed me like that.

“We’ll be going to Ashinay and Sorynay and Tal-Polsen next,” the head soldier said, “and there’s this place called Telhynay or something like that.”

“That’s full of the Nameless!” I blurted out.

“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. “I thought… oh well. Anyway, Vurian is taking the recruits to the town. I’ll ask him.”

Then a man came running from the other side of the village with fire in his hands! At least that was what it looked like. He was throwing the fire from one hand to another. “We don’t want those of the Nameless here! Or at least fight me to give me my master’s trial!”

One of the soldiers got up, a woman no taller than me. “Yes, I’ll fight you,” she said, “that’ll be fun! But why not wait until tomorrow when you’re a bit more sober? You know you’re not at your best now.”

I didn’t know what to think. Did the soldiers belong with the Nameless? They were the king’s soldiers! But then I remembered someone saying that the king had married a woman of the Nameless, too. Well, he was the king, he would be strong enough to handle that.

The head soldier now had her hands on the other woman’s shoulders and said “you don’t have to do that, you know”, but the soldier really wanted to fight. I agreed, that’s what soldiers are for, right? And if this soldier belonged with the Nameless it was a good thing for one of ours to fight her, even if he was drunk and shouty.

“Not here, though,” one of the old people from the village said, “use the fallow field, we don’t want you to set anything on fire by mistake.” And off they went to a field just outside the village and everybody followed them, us too, because we wanted to see what would happen.

It looked like dancing at first, but then I saw that they both had weapons in their hands, sticks or knives or swords made of light! And they were really hitting each other with those. Mialle saw that too, but not everybody did, I think. They had a kind of thing around them that I saw but Mialle didn’t, as if they were fighting under a giant upside-down bowl. Made of nothing, but I could still see it! And I knew that nothing could get in or out.

The fight went on for a long time, and it looked like nobody was winning, but then there was a great flash of light and the upside-down bowl went away and the drunk man was holding his head and the soldier slapped him on the shoulder. “Well done! We’re both masters now. Have a beer on me!” And she took him to the place where other people were already drinking. I didn’t think he needed any more beer, but he thought he did because he went with her. The old men and women said that it was good to have an old-fashioned fight like there used to be, they hadn’t seen that for a long time.

Then Mialle and I went up to the hay-loft where we’d been told we could sleep. There was noise outside, and noise inside from mice and rats and cats, but we were so tired that we fell asleep soon anyway.

The next day the soldiers woke us up at sunrise (and that was very early, it was just after Midsummer!) to set out. The man who’d paid me the two shillings gave us a whole stack of bread and cheese to eat on the way! “Good work deserves good pay,” he said.

Vurian knew a lot of soldier songs and we learned them all. I found a bit of hollow wood at the roadside and drummed on it while other people sang, because my voice doesn’t really do what I want any more, not since the Feast of Naigha (Ma says it’s going to be all right but it’s really annoying now). Most of the songs were about fighting, what things you’d stick into a Khas (I didn’t know what a Khas was but Vurian said they were the enemy who the king had taken Solay from), and some made me and Mialle blush, and one was really silly, it was about someone who went on a ship and had a new girlfriend in every town and when he came home they were all in his house waiting for him so he went back to sea.

It was a couple of days’ more travelling, and it had been so much fun to march and sing and drum and sit down around a fire in the evenings and eat together, that it was kind of a pity that the soldiers were going to the camp and Mialle and I were going into the town.

It was a real town! With an earth wall around it, or at least parts of an earth wall, they were still building it. In a gap in the earth wall a woman was standing, in a leather jacket and leather breeches and leather boots, with a sort of axe on a pole in her hands. She said “Halt! I am Erne of the Town Watch.” And someone who was building the wall shouted “Erne is the Town Watch!” but the woman ignored it and said to us “State your name, age, where you come from, and what your business is!”

“Mistress Town Watch, I’m Ravei Ferin, eleven years old, from Ashinay, and I’m going to be apprenticed with Master Rhanion the blacksmith,” I said. Mialle said sort of the same thing (except that she said Mialle and Tal-Polsen and Master Valyn the coppersmith) but Erne didn’t understand her at first because she talks as if she’s got fluff in her mouth, because that’s how they talk in Tal-Polsen. I got used to it but of course Erne hadn’t been travelling with Mialle for a week. She had to say it three times! But then Erne let us go through and told us where to go.

“First street on the right, fourth house for you,” and she took Mialle’s hand and bent her fingers one by one as if she thought Mialle couldn’t count to four. “And fifth house for you,” she said to me, and I was out of reach before she could take my hand too. It was easy to find! The first street on the right was full of workshops, first a carpenter, then a tinsmith, then another carpenter, and the fourth house was the coppersmith’s and Mialle went inside. “See you,” I said, because if we were neighbours we’d sure see each other again.

So there I was in my new master’s workshop. It was a real smithy, a large one! Someone was beating iron into shape at the forge, a boy a bit older than me was pulling the bellows, someone else was tempering a piece in the water trough, all smells and sounds that made me homesick! But then the bellows boy saw me and came my way. “Don’t say anything! You’re … Ferin, yes, you must be. From Ashinay. I’ll get the master!”

Master Rhanion wasn’t very tall but he looked very strong. He got the guild book and pressed my hand in soot and then on a page of the book. “Do I have to write my name too?” I asked, but he said “Nah, we all know you’re Ferin. Do you have a leather apron?”

I did, in fact, but it was hanging on the hook in Ma’s workshop. And it was inches too short. “No, master.”

“It’s one shilling. And burn your name in it or the others will make away with it.”

I had a shilling! The one I earned in Ilsinay. So I paid him that, and gave him Ma’s twelve riders. He counted them, “one, two, three, five, six, six and a half, eight, nine, yes, that’s twelve riders all right” and put them back in the leather bag and the leather bag under his shirt. “Put your things upstairs, you’ll see which bed is yours, the one that hasn’t been slept in. I don’t beat my apprentices much, only when they deserve it. Shoo!” And when I was climbing the stairs I heard him shout “Jeran! Go tell Alyse to cook half again as much, the new apprentice is here!”

Jeran — the bellows boy — came up and gave me the leather apron and a shirt and breeches rougher than my own, to work in. I borrowed a nail and held it with the tongs and burned “Ferin” on the inside of the apron, and put it on, and then Jeran set me to pull the bellows instead of him! Well, I’d already been doing that at home so I’d probably be stiff and sore but not for long, and it was in a spot where I could see what everybody was doing.

And at the end of the day the master sent us to wash at the pump at the end of the street, beyond the potter’s workshop which was the sixth house. Mialle was there too, everybody used that pump!

“Is your master all right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “yours?”

“Mine too, I think.” And that was all we said to each other then, we both went to our own place to eat and sleep.