Page 91

“That fast?” Mercer said, surprised. “I’m impressed.”

“People seem to listen when you’re king.”

Mercer snorted, looking over the soldiers Fenrir had brought with narrowed eyes. “I’ll pair ‘em off, two to a blacksmith. Don’t want to tie up all my skilled men training but won’t take long to get ‘em up to speed. They can pour steel in the rollers if they don’t take to the hammer.”

“How long do you think until the tower’s complete?”

Mercer squinted up at the beams barely poking above the tree line. “Couple weeks or so, then we’ll have to run the power line and hoist up the antenna. That robot around?”

“Bastion? He’s down at the Labs still. You need him?”

“Electrical ain’t my specialty. Could use the help when the time comes.”

“I’ll send a messenger to the Labs to let him know.”

Fenrir worked with one of Mercer’s welders that afternoon, learning how the beams were attached while an engineer explained how she calculated the weight they had to account for and how many support straps each beam would require. It was a lot of math, but Fenrir wrapped his mind around enough of it, and by the end of the week he saw the tower in a new light that reshaped the rest of the Scar and all the memories it still harbored.

Yet Orpheus’ drill overshadowed it all. Like a spear punching through a wound in the world that had not healed, it was a reminder of why Fenrir was standing there at all. Why any of them were.

He cleared his head at the anvil, hammering a pile of straps Mercer only discarded half of.

“You always this good at following instructions?” The hand that clapped his shoulder was there and gone faster than Fenrir could react. It seemed like a compliment but something small and dark inside Fenrir wriggled like it wasn’t. His next swing came as shaky as his breath.

Days turned into a week, a week into two. He met with the nobles every third morning, Vera guiding him through a list of issues he did his best to solve. Then he headed out to the forges for an afternoon of work. Of hammers and bolts and straps and beams and a tower that grew taller day by day. Completion loomed on the horizon, so close that Fenrir began wondering if there were techniques that had nothing to do with the construction of industrial-grade steel to learn.

“Mercer,” he asked one afternoon after Mercer had sent his smiths home early as a reward for being ahead of schedule, “have you ever made a sword?”

Mercer crossed his arms and cocked his head, looking Fenrir up and down, then smiled. “Suppose I shoulda seen this comin’, eh?”

Mercer had, in fact, made swords.

And shields. And armor.

Fenrir couldn’t help his gleeful grin when Mercer showed him what to do. How to fold steel to make it stronger. How to sharpen a blade with the wheel. How to bend sheeting into cuirasses and pauldrons, the nuance of engraving details which Mercer insisted were the most important part of the process.

“Didn’t know you were an artist,” Fenrir said the afternoon Mercer had set them up inside his personal tent to go over inlaying and encountered a spread of sketches alongside the silver they were to use.

“Started out making baubles for them nobles. Eventually earned enough to start my own forge and then began workin’ with Red.”

“You helped build the Stacks?”

“Fixed what I could, rebuilt even more. Still not sure exactly what it was I made half the time, but Red knew what she wanted and I’m good at following directions.”

“As good as me?” Fenrir wiggled his eyebrows, picking up a chisel and twirling it deftly between his fingers. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve learned it’s easier to do what Red says, too.”

Mercer didn’t laugh, however. He held Fenrir’s gaze for a too long moment, the birdsong from outside the tent lending a strange quality to the sudden heaviness inside it. That wriggling was back, like something Fenrir had said wasn’t wrong, but…right.

Finally, Mercer sighed. “Get to work, then. Let’s see how much you’ve learned.”

Fenrir pretended he was a squire of some glorious knight, preparing her armor because in a few days’ time they’d arrive at the championship joust and every good squire knew getting the crowd on your knight’s side was the real way to win a battle. He carved furrows from the steel, carefully laid the silver and then hammered it in, only to warm it again so he could shape it smooth. By the time he lifted the polishing piece from the surface, it caught the light with a perfect, glimmering shine.

“Looks good,” Mercer observed, turning the bracer over and then picking at the silver with his fingernail. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to etch with acid.”

He made a bookmark with the acid. A lopped-off arm holding a wicked sword framed by two dozen tiny hearts that he capped off with a piece of gold yarn the color of his hair.

“This is for you,” he said, when he climbed the stairs to the tower the next morning before his meeting with the nobles. Daedra’s bark was nearly as satisfying as the evenness of his breath, the steady hammer of his heart, and the feeling of strength he retained after climbing twenty stories without a single break.

Chapter XXVI