Kes set his canvas pack of boiled linen bandages and dried willow-root down beside Seyun’s bellows bench, bowing respectfully to his teacher and to Master Gant before wiping the road dust from his brow. Nineteen years old, with the slightly uneven right shoulder left by the Aperture Court’s rigid substitute breathing method before he joined Daro’s black-roof school, Kes had been running supply relays between the northern farmsteads and the mountain trail for three days. At his belt hung the coiled, twelve-foot braided hemp practice cord he used to drill the younger students when wooden swords were scarce.
“Archivist Vel sent word from the schoolhouse that the southern road is still quiet, Teacher,” Kes reported. He stepped closer to the stone cool trough filled with dark stone spring water. “I brought the last two bundles of clean lint for Healer Mina’s cave.”
“Good time to arrive,” Daro said, picking up the heavy iron tongs and lifting the newly shaped twenty-two-inch short sword out of the charcoal bed to bring its heat down to an even cherry-red before the cool. “Look at the shape. Three fire ribs from Ash Reed’s pit, broad leaf profile, no fuller runes.”
Kes stepped up to the anvil rail beside Joren and Seyun, squinting against the dull red glow of the steel. For ten seconds the young student studied the broad, clean taper of the edges with genuine admiration. Then his eyes stopped four inches above the tang shoulder, along the lower third of the central…
