Tarin would not let them inside until the soldiers put their swords on the ground.
Darr refused. The smith began to close the forge door.
“Only the smithy,” Selka said. “Not your house.”
“My house is through there.” Tarin pointed past the cold furnace. “They're all through there. You don't get a choice of doors.”
Behind Tarin a small boy sat on a flour sack, holding a bowl with both hands. He stared at the military stitching on Selka's old prison coat. Then at the god. His mouth moved around a question he did not ask.
Selka unbuckled the little knife Darr had given her for cutting harness. She laid it on the step.
“I have a broken yoke,” she said. “You have a forge. We have grain and two sound iron bars. We need one of them made into a brace.”
Tarin's eyes went to the bars. A smith's look, quick and unwilling. “And the other?”
“Yours.”
“The other, and grain. After the work.”
Selka looked at Darr. He put his sword down. The men behind him did the same, except for the two he left with the horses.
The forge smelled of wet charcoal and cabbage. A young woman lay on a bed by the dividing door. Her forearm had a deep scar that had healed normally; her chest still wore a bronze strip pulsing with borrowed warmth. She slept with her eyes half open. Tarin named her without waiting to be asked: Eska, the older of the smith's two children.
“Merrow took her to carry shot for the catapults. Didn't bring her back. I did.”
The boy scraped his empty bowl. Tarin took it from him too sharply, then laid a hand on his head. “There's broth when it's hot.”
Selka carried the damaged yoke inside. Darr helped, and Tarin watched their awkwardness with open contempt. A small lever in the corner began to squeal as Tarin worked it; air entered the furnace. Selka took over at a nod. Her bruised hand soon hurt, but the warmth returning to the room made stopping seem worse.
Ruun sat near the furnace. Its temple stone remained on the carriage outside. Eska's bronze strip brightened as it came nearer. Tarin noticed.
“Look at that,” the smith said. “It can do it when it wants.”
Selka heard the flatness in the voice too late.
Tarin took the heated bar out with tongs, swung it low and drove its glowing end toward Ruun's torn side. Selka lunged across the bellows handles. Her shoulder struck Tarin hard enough to send both of them against the anvil.
The bar hit the floor, scattering sparks.
Darr seized Tarin by the collar. The boy began screaming. Eska woke, struggling to lift her head.
“Let go,” Selka told Darr.
“Stand away.”
“The child.”
He glanced at the bed. Eska's support was still glowing, but her mouth was open and her eyes fixed on the bar. He loosened his grip without letting go entirely.
Tarin spat at Selka. “It gets the road. It gets guards. She gets a little strip of metal that goes dark whenever your people want more heat.”
“If it dies, the strip goes dark too.”
“You would say that.”
“I saw it.”
“Then you can watch.”
The boy had backed into the corner with his hands over his ears. Selka crouched, careful not to move toward him.
“Does he have a cup?” she asked Tarin. “We'll put the broth in that. The bowl is too hot to hold.”
Tarin stared at her. Then the smith pulled free of Darr, fetched a cracked cup and put it on the bench.
They stayed. No one said they should. The yoke had to be repaired; the children had to eat; Selka's shoulder throbbed where it had struck the anvil. Darr retrieved the fallen bar. Tarin began heating it again, this time bending it into the brace she had promised.
Ruun watched the work with one hand over its ribs. Selka looked at it once. It turned its face away.