Gaunt was objecting to the bellows when Piers Hadley came through the yard gate with a leather roll under one arm and a list folded in his coat. The bellows were a good pair, made of the Mason’s oxhide and mended twice by Gaunt himself, and they had a fault in the left valve that let the air out in a long sour sigh whenever the fire was asked for more. Gaunt had told the fire so, and the fire had not listened, and so he had been telling the bellows, which at least had the decency to be made of something that could be argued with.
“That valve,” said Gaunt, without turning round, “is a disgrace to the trade. It was built by a man who had never once been asked to make a fire hot.”
“Is it a fault in the leather?” asked Piers.
“It is a fault in the man who stitched the leather, which is me, and I am not going to be told so by a wool-factor with a list in his coat.” Gaunt turned round, and his bad arm came with him, strapped to his chest in the splint that Sella had made before she died, and the grey light of the yard caught the crooked line of the forearm and made it look like a bar of iron that had been dropped and never straightened. “What do you want?”
