Like Fire In The Forge

 

46 – Drawing

      Daja was alone in the forge. Since their return from the northern provinces, Frostpine had been unceasingly in demand as all the work that accumulated in his absence suddenly ‘had to be done at once’. Daja didn’t mind. It meant she had the forge to herself. She could practice with her new toys – the fire square and the living brass that coated her palm – at will.

     Which she could be doing right now, she thought sourly, if it weren’t for Frostpine’s insistence that she take a break from them. Daja had run through the list of projects on hold until she ran across one that caught her eye.

     Frostpine had noted that the next few months would involve a lot of fine work for Winding Circle itself. Fine work for which the resources would have to be prepared ahead of time. Gold wire, for instance, was critically low in their stores.  The idea of spending an afternoon working with one of her favourite metals tickled a part of Daja desperately in need of soothing. As much fun as it was getting all wrapped up in her studied of the squares and the brass, it had been a while since she got back to the enjoyable basics. And she’d missed gold. She’d missed working with it, and feeling its pulse as she drew it into shape.

     She’d settled into the steady rhythm of drawing like falling into a feather bed.  For half an hour she’d worked steadily, undisturbed. Sweat beaded on her skin. The band she wore around her forehead grew damp. Everything narrowed to the swoop of the forge flames, the slow beat of her own breath and the pinprick hole in the drawing plate as gold flowed out to follow her.

     Now foreign voices pricked at her consciousness. Holding on to her meditative restfulness, she drew the last of the gold through the hole. With it safely through Daja allowed herself a brief glance out the door.

     The wire coiled smoothly as she processed what she’d seen. Two novices crunched down the gravel path to the forge. One wore the red-belted white of Fire Temple, the other, the green of Earth. They looked exactly alike.

     The Trader rubbed beeswax over the last of the wire with her back to the door, listening. Further words were exchanged. One girl laughed. A drift of breeze carried the scents of lemongrass and burning sage into the forge, where they mingled uneasily with the scents of smoke and hot metal. Gravel crunched as one set of feet moved away.

     Daja half-turned to greet the interloper. If nothing else, she couldn’t appear rude. Frostpine might be a mighty enough mage to snub fusty Dedicates and their runners, but while Daja’s own name was growing (she’d heard no less than three versions of the tale of the Wildfire and the Trader Mage by the time they arrived back in Summersea) she wasn’t so lofty yet as to turn away customers. Even temple ones. Whatever she thought, the visit probably meant work.

     She noticed absent-mindedly that while the smell of lemongrass had gone, the burning sage remained. With her attention settling fully on the girl, Daja realised she knew her from somewhere. She frowned at the novice and began flipping pages of her memory. Familiarity tugged at her. Thick hair wound up around itself at the base of the girl’s neck in a simplified version of city fashion. Allowing for that to be a braid…

     As she stared at the girl – only now placing her as the novice from the courtyard – it crossed Daja’s mind that she’d been mistaken that day. What she’d taken for a trick of the sunlight that day was in fact natural: the girl had hair like Tris, red as copper. Red, like fire in the forge.

     Suddenly uncomfortable with herself, Daja pushed the thought away and began to strip off her heavy mitts.

     The novice’s dark eyes crinkled. “You remember me. I am Lina.”

     “Daja.”

     When the girl reached a small, hard hand out to Daja’s, the Trader found calluses of staff-work and manual labour as much as academic study to match her own.

     The smith put the sudden thump of her heart when they made contact down to the heat of the day combining with the heat of the forge. She flashed her teeth in a grin. “It’s nice to exchange names at last.”

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Brevity. It's not one of my strong suits.