Anet was arguing with a bell.
“No,” she said, and struck it again with the small wooden hammer. “That isn't it.”
The note trembled through the foundry loft, thin and sour. Selka stood on the stairs while her daughter turned the bell an inch and tried a third time. Bronze dust shone along her cheek. Her sleeves were rolled up, and one dark curl had fallen across her eyes.
Twenty years old. Selka had been measuring the child in breaths for so long that this age still seemed a trick someone had played on her.
“Your mother,” said the woman beside the bench.
Anet looked up. The hammer slipped from her fingers.
She came around the bench too quickly, stopped to take a breath, and came the rest of the way. Selka embraced her without speaking. The apron between them smelled of metal and warm flour. Her daughter's ribs moved against her.
“They said tomorrow,” Anet whispered.
“They've changed their minds.”
“About killing you?”
“For the present.”
Anet pulled away. “Don't do that.”
“What?”
“Make it small.”
The woman at the bench began stacking tools noisily. Selka knew Sorell by sight, but they had never had more than a wage dispute between them. Now the forewoman looked older, or Selka was noticing her properly: wide hands, burned wrists, a tired face determined not to interfere.
“We're taking Ruun to Reedgate,” Selka said. “Prisoner exchange. When I've finished, I can come home.”
Her daughter looked toward the loft window. Outside, the foundry yard was full of smoke and men moving molds. It had been Anet's whole country for the weeks Selka was locked away.
“I've got the boat-bell commission,” Anet said.
“The little coaster?”
“Three boats. Sorell's going downriver with us. Iven and me.”
“You can deliver the bells and return.”
“There's work at the coast.”
“Winter work? In sea air?”
“Bell work, Mother. It happens indoors too.”
Selka began calculating: damp beds, irregular hearth supply, the journey, the weeks between a letter and an answer. Anet saw her doing it.
“I didn't apply for your permission.”
“You're alive because we have warmth here.”
“I know.”
That answer had changed since she was a child. Once it had meant gratitude. Now it meant she had heard the sentence often enough.
On the bench lay a small leather bellows fitted to a bronze mouthpiece. Selka touched it.
“For the mold?”
Sorell shook her head. “For her.”
Anet picked it up. “Iven made the handles too far apart at first. You had to have his ridiculous hands.”
The young man in the doorway glanced at his own hands. “They hold a hammer. Yours don't hold a grudge very efficiently.”
Anet smiled. Then her smile faltered. She pressed her palm to the narrow pendant under her shirt. Its glow showed through the cloth, pulsing slower than Selka expected.
“Sit down,” Selka said.
“I am sitting.”
“You aren't.”
Anet sat on the stool, furious enough to look well. Sorell took the bellows and held the mouthpiece over her face. Anet leaned forward into it. A small, ordinary sound filled the loft: leather folding, air moving. Iven rested a hand on the bench and watched without pretending not to.
Selka wanted to seize the handles. She had no idea how to use them. That ignorance made the others' quietness unbearable.
After a little while Anet lifted her hand and Sorell stopped.
“It helps,” the girl said. “When the supply misses.”
“And if it misses in the night?”
“Then someone gets up.”
“Someone cannot get up every night forever.”
Sorell set the bellows down. “Nor can you keep her twenty forever.”
Darr called from the stairs. The sound broke something Selka had been about to say. She took her daughter's hands instead. They were rougher than hers.
“I left money with the baker,” she said. “The woman on the corner. Enough for the room.”
“You thought you were going to die.”
“I wasn't going to leave you with nothing.”
Anet looked at the bellows. “You didn't.”
Selka did not trust herself to answer. She kissed her daughter's dusty forehead. Anet let her, then caught the sleeve of the prison coat.
“Come back,” she said.
“I intend to.”
“That's an interpreter's answer.”
“It's the only one I have.”
At the stairs Selka looked back. Her daughter had taken up the hammer again. She struck the bell, listened, and shook her head. She was still there, correcting the sound, when Selka went down into the yard.