Tavin’s yard became the Common Forge on a cold bright morning, with a sign that hung crooked.
He had made the sign himself. A plank of yard timber, planed, with the letters burned into it with a hot rod: COMMON FORGE. He had done the burning at the bench over two evenings, with Pell holding the plank steady and Mara watching and not being allowed to help. The letters were large and careful and slightly uneven, like his handwriting on the plate.
He hung it over the yard gate.
It took him an hour.
The old gate. The iron gate in the yard’s front wall, where Halvek had stood with his folder and where the guards had sat on their crates in the lane. Tavin stood on a ladder and hung the sign on two hooks above it, and climbed down, and stepped back into the lane to look.
It hung crooked. The left end a hand’s width lower than the right.
“It’s crooked,” Pell said.
“I know,” Tavin said.
