"Because your work is worth it." I hold her gaze for one beat. "Isn't that what you just argued?"
Her mouth presses flat. She doesn't thank me. I don't expect her to.
I pull the coin from my belt and hand it to the father, who takes it with shaking hands and too many words of gratitude. I turn back to my horse, one foot in the stirrup, and glance over my shoulder at Edria, who has returned to her anvil and is making every visible effort to pretend I no longer exist.
"Don't go far," I tell her. "I find myself looking forward to our next conversation."
She doesn't answer. But her hammer comes down slightly harder than necessary on the iron, and I count that as something.
I ride out of Oxwood with the column behind me and Cyran predictably silent at my left side for exactly as long as it takes to clear the village lane.
"Not a word," I say.
"I wasn't going to say anything, my lord."
"Good."
He says nothing for another thirty seconds.
"She dropped the horseshoe at his feet."
"Cyran."
"I'm just noting it."
I look ahead at the road and say nothing, which he correctly interprets as permission to be satisfied with himself for the remainder of the ride.
3
EDRIA
When I've got the morning fire going, Oxwood has already decided what happened yesterday was either the bravest or the stupidest thing anyone in this village has done in recent memory.
Probably both.
Old Perrin tells the Henley boys I spat at a dark elf's feet. By midmorning, the miller's wife has it that I challenged Nyrius to a duel over a horseshoe. Aldric stops in to collect his repaired plow blade and spends ten minutes staring at me like he's trying to figure out if I've lost my mind.
"You're still breathing," he finally says.
"Noticed that myself." I hand him the blade. "Two copper."
He pays and leaves fast, like trouble might be contagious.
The actual story travels too, eventually, in pieces—how I dropped the shoe at the guard's feet, how Nyrius, what they’re calling the elf lord, laughed instead of ordering me flogged, how he paid double and rode off making promises about coming back. That part worries people more than the insult did. Any lord with a reason to return is a problem with no clean solution, especially a dark elf.
By afternoon, I can feel the anxiety in every interaction. The farmers who come for their tools are quieter than usual. Nobody lingers.
Papa waits until supper.
He sets down his spoon, which means it's serious, and looks at me across the table with the exhaustion that says he’s been rehearsing this conversation all day.
"You could have been arrested," he says.
"I know."
"You could have been beaten in the street."
"I know, Papa."
