The certificate made a dry crackling sound every time Old Jack tightened his grip on it.
Silas noticed on the third time.
On the fifth, he said, “You’re going to tear it.”
Jack looked down at the sheet in his hand.
“I’m thinking.”
“You think with your fingers?”
“Sometimes.”
They continued up the muddy road.
Briar Glen had mostly returned to normal already.
The excitement around the Awakening Hall had begun draining toward kitchens, fields, sheds, and the thousand small tasks that did not care whether a five-year-old had discovered the structure of his soul before breakfast.
A wagon rattled past carrying split oak.
Someone was repairing a fence along the Miller property.
Farther downhill, Mrs. Baker was explaining to three different neighbors why a Cast-Iron Ladle was, in fact, a perfectly respectable Eidolon.
Nell did not appear convinced.
Silas looked toward the certificate again.
“Greyhaven.”
Jack grunted.
“What about it?”
“Ward said Greyhaven was going to enjoy me.”
“He said that because he has a cruel sense of humor.”
Silas waited.
Jack lasted perhaps six steps.
Then he sighed.
“Greyhaven Preparatory Academy.”
That was better.
“What does it prepare people for?”
“Depends on the person.”
“Bearer training?”
“If they have Aether.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Letters. Sums. Trade records. Surveying. Clerk work if they’re lucky. Apprenticeships if they aren’t too proud.”
Silas considered that.
That sounded less like a school for supernatural elites and more like an institution that had discovered educated children were useful.
He approved.
Jack continued, apparently unable to stop once started.
“They’ve got an agreement with the outer villages. Briar Glen gets one supported seat when we have a child worth sending.”
“Worth?”
Jack’s mouth tightened.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
That did not mean Silas liked the word.
Jack glanced at him.
“The village pays travel and some of the entrance fees. Academy provides a bed. Meals are partly covered. You work for the rest.”
“What kind of work?”
“Kitchens. Stables. Grounds. Carrying messages. Cleaning classrooms. Whatever they decide a child can do without setting the place on fire.”
Silas looked back toward the village smithy.
“Smithing?”
“Maybe.”
That made the arrangement significantly more interesting.
“What would they teach about Crests?”
Jack gave him a look.
“You heard Officer Ward tell you not to go looking for beasts.”
“I asked what they teach.”
“Yes. Which is how you ask dangerous questions while pretending they’re harmless.”
Silas filed that away as a useful description.
Jack rubbed at his jaw.
“They keep records. Hunters come through. Concord people. Bearers. Teachers who know more than I do.”
“That last category seems broad.”
Jack stopped walking.
Silas stopped with him.
The old man stared down.
“Was that a joke?”
“Possibly.”
Jack pointed the certificate at him.
“You’re getting worse.”
They resumed walking.
The Hale smithy stood near the southern edge of the village, where the road narrowed before climbing toward the wooded ridges.
No smoke rose from the chimney.
Silas noticed that before they reached the door.
Garrick was awake.
He simply was not working.
That was unusual enough to qualify as information.
Jack noticed too.
His pace slowed.
“Your father know how to read?”
“Yes.”
Jack gave him a suspicious glance.
“Properly?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else you want to tell me before we go in?”
Silas thought of his left hand.
“No.”
Technically accurate.
Jack pushed open the door without knocking.
“Garrick.”
The forge was dim after the morning light.
Cold iron occupied one side of the room in organized disorder—horseshoes, nails, hinges, two broken plowshares, a wagon tire waiting to be reset. The banked forge had gone dark enough that only a faint orange glow remained beneath the ash.
Garrick sat at the kitchen table.
He had moved from coffee to something stronger.
Silas smelled it before he saw the bottle.
His father looked first at Jack.
Then at Silas.
Then at the paper.
His eyes stayed there.
Jack walked over and put the certificate on the table.
“Read.”
Garrick did not move.
“Morning to you too.”
“I said read.”
“You usually say more before becoming unpleasant.”
“I’m trying a new approach.”
Garrick looked at Silas.
Silas lifted one shoulder.
“I wouldn’t interfere.”
That earned him a glare from Jack and something almost amused from Garrick.
Almost.
Then Garrick picked up the paper.
Silas watched his eyes.
Name.
Household.
Briar Glen.
Wildvine.
The movement stopped.
Only for a moment.
Then:
Innate Aether: 10 — Perfect.
Garrick read that line twice.
Whatever alcohol remained in his expression disappeared.
Jack saw it.
“There.”
Garrick set the paper down.
“There what?”
“That.”
“You’ll have to narrow it down.”
“That look.”
Garrick leaned back.
“I looked at a piece of paper.”
“You looked at it like it owed you money.”
Silas moved toward the stove.
There was still porridge from breakfast.
He added a little water before reheating it.
Behind him, Jack dragged out a chair.
“The village will sponsor him.”
“No.”
Silas stopped stirring.
Jack blinked.
“What?”
“No.”
Garrick picked up his mug.
Jack stared at him long enough that the room became quieter.
Then he turned to Silas.
“Did your father suffer a head injury while we were gone?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Garrick.”
“No.”
Jack put both hands flat on the table.
“Greyhaven has a supported place. One. We haven’t had a child qualify for it in eleven years.”
Garrick drank.
“He qualified.”
“With a perfect reading.”
“So the paper says.”
“You think Ward forged it?”
“No.”
“You think the crystal was wrong?”
“No.”
Jack's face reddened by degrees.
Silas lowered the heat under the pot.
This seemed prudent.
“Then what exactly is the problem?”
Garrick's eyes moved to the certificate.
“Wildvine.”
Jack made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
“You heard the same examiner I did. The boy can train.”
“He can stand at a threshold.”
“And Greyhaven can teach him how to cross it.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe is more than he gets here.”
Garrick looked at him.
That was the first genuinely dangerous moment in the conversation.
Nothing supernatural happened.
No Eidolon appeared.
No pressure filled the room.
His father merely looked at Old Jack.
Jack, to his credit, did not step back.
Silas had seen men twice his size decide against arguing with Garrick over the price of a repair.
Old Jack apparently had immunity.
He leaned closer.
“You know what he does every day?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t believe you do.”
Jack pointed toward Silas without turning.
“He cooks. He cleans. He helps in here. He runs errands. He knows which Widow Mercer pays in eggs and which of the Bell boys still owes you for a broken harrow pin.”
Garrick's jaw moved.
Jack continued.
“He is five.”
Silas decided this was not the ideal time to mention that he found bookkeeping relaxing.
“You want him here because this house functions better when he’s in it.”
Garrick said nothing.
“That is not the same thing as needing him.”
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A quiet settled over the table.
Silas stirred the porridge once.
Jack's anger had shifted.
Less heat.
More weight.
“Village covers the road,” he said. “Academy gives him a work placement. I can get him boots before winter. Miller boys have two coats between them and one will fit him after Ruth lets the sleeves down.”
“I have a coat.”
Jack glanced at Silas.
“You have something with buttons.”
“It keeps out most weather.”
“Not helping.”
Silas returned to the pot.
Garrick rubbed a thumb along the chipped edge of his mug.
“When?”
“Autumn term.”
“How long?”
“Twelve weeks.”
That seemed to surprise him.
Again, barely.
Jack saw that too.
“Plenty of time for you to recover whatever portion of your judgment drowned in that bottle.”
Garrick looked at the bottle.
Then at Jack.
“Careful.”
“No.”
Jack stood.
For a second Silas thought the argument might continue.
Instead the old man took the certificate from the table and held it out to him.
Silas accepted it.
“Keep it dry.”
“Ward said the same thing.”
“Ward is occasionally correct.”
Jack put on his hat.
At the door, he stopped.
“Enrollment wagon leaves in twelve weeks.”
Garrick did not answer.
“If you change your mind, you know where I live.”
“I know where everyone lives.”
“Yes, because you never go anywhere.”
That landed.
Silas saw it in the stillness that followed.
Jack did too.
Regret crossed the older man's face, but only briefly.
Then he opened the door.
“Silas.”
“Yes?”
“You still owe me an answer about the woods.”
Silas considered.
“Not today.”
Jack closed his eyes.
“Wonderful.”
He left.
The door shut.
Silas listened to his boots move away through the mud.
Then there was only the small sound of porridge beginning to bubble.
He took it off the heat.
Garrick remained at the table.
Silas set out two bowls.
Neither spoke until they had eaten several spoonfuls.
“Do you want to go?”
Silas looked up.
His father was studying the bowl rather than him.
“Yes.”
Garrick's hand stopped.
Silas continued before the silence could become the wrong kind.
“I want to understand the system.”
“System.”
“The thresholds. Crests. Compatibility. Aetherbeasts. Ward knows enough to perform Awakenings, but he isn't a researcher.”
Garrick's eyes lifted.
“Researcher.”
“He had rules. He didn't always have reasons.”
“You noticed that.”
“He told me Wildvine isn't trained because people with Wildvine rarely have enough Aether to train.”
Garrick waited.
“And?”
“Which means there isn't much information because no one invests in producing information.”
Still nothing.
Silas took another bite.
“That isn't proof the Eidolon is weak. It's proof the data is bad.”
A muscle moved beside Garrick's mouth.
Silas could not tell whether he was amused or concerned.
Possibly both.
“You're five.”
“I've noticed.”
“You don't sound five.”
Silas considered several responses and rejected all of them.
“I listen.”
Garrick stared.
Silas realized his mistake.
That had been yesterday's excuse.
His father remembered.
“Right,” Garrick said.
Silas ate another spoonful of porridge.
The silence grew.
Eventually Garrick leaned back.
“School teaches people what other people already know.”
“Usually.”
“You think that's enough?”
“No.”
That answer seemed to interest him.
Silas set down the spoon.
“But it's faster than rediscovering everything alone.”
For the first time since Jack had left, Garrick looked directly at him.
Silas held the gaze.
He wanted Greyhaven.
He wanted its archives.
Its instructors.
Its hunters.
Its mistakes.
He wanted to know why a living thing could be killed and turned into a permanent structure inside another living thing.
He wanted to know why the power he had cultivated through Blackthorn methods answered to this world's Aether.
He wanted to know what waited behind the first threshold.
Most of all, he disliked having questions whose answers existed in rooms he could not enter.
But wanting something did not make it owed to him.
If Garrick refused, Silas would find another route eventually.
That was what routes were for.
His father exhaled through his nose.
“Bring out the vine.”
Silas blinked.
“The Wildvine?”
“Unless you've acquired another plant since breakfast.”
Silas raised his right hand.
The response came more easily than it had in the Hall.
He reached inward—not with muscle, but with the same part of himself he used to direct Blackthorn breathing.
Something answered.
A thread of green appeared against his palm.
It lengthened.
Two dark leaves opened.
The Wildvine curled loosely around his wrist.
Garrick stopped breathing.
Silas noticed because he had been watching for a reaction.
There it was.
Not disappointment.
Not confusion.
Pain.
It vanished so quickly another child might have missed it.
Silas did not.
His father reached toward the vine.
Stopped.
His fingers remained an inch from one of the leaves.
The leaf turned toward him.
Garrick pulled his hand away as if it had burned him.
“Dismiss it.”
Silas did.
The vine faded.
“Again.”
He summoned it.
Again.
Dismissed.
Again.
On the fourth repetition Garrick finally nodded.
“Control is clean.”
“It feels similar to moving Aether through the Blackthorn breathing paths.”
That got another look.
“Does it.”
“Yes.”
Garrick stood.
His chair scraped over the floor.
He walked toward the forge, then stopped halfway there.
Silas watched his back.
There were questions available.
Too many.
He chose the one that mattered now.
“There was something else.”
Garrick turned.
The change was immediate.
Not dramatic.
Worse.
Every trace of fatigue left his posture.
“What?”
“During the Awakening.”
Garrick crossed the room.
Silas had never seen him move that quickly inside the house.
“What else?”
“My left hand.”
His father's gaze dropped.
Silas slowly opened it.
Nothing happened at first.
He concentrated.
The sensation returned.
Cold.
Then weight.
The floorboards did not actually shift beneath him.
His body believed they should.
Darkness gathered over his palm.
Not shadow.
Something denser.
A short haft formed first, almost black but carrying a dull metallic sheen where the window light touched it.
Then the head.
A war maul.
Compact only because Silas was small.
One broad striking face.
A heavy squared poll.
Lines too faint to be called decoration ran beneath its surface, appearing only when the light crossed them at an angle.
The moment it fully manifested, Silas's knees almost gave way.
Aether vanished from him.
Not all of it.
Enough.
His arm dropped.
Garrick caught his wrist before the maul struck the floor.
For an instant neither moved.
Silas looked at his father's hand around his forearm.
Then at his face.
Garrick had gone pale.
Not surprised.
Recognition was worse than surprise.
“You know what it is.”
The grip tightened.
“Who saw?”
“No one.”
“Ward?”
“No.”
“Jack?”
“No.”
“The other children?”
“They were watching the Wildvine.”
Garrick's eyes closed.
Once.
When they opened again, Silas saw something in them he had never seen before.
Relief.
Then grief.
Then something much harder.
“Dismiss it.”
Silas tried.
Nothing happened.
The weight remained.
Garrick adjusted his grip.
“Don't force it. Find the same place you found the vine.”
Silas steadied his breathing.
The maul seemed to pull at every path inside him at once.
He stopped resisting that pull.
Then reversed it.
The weapon vanished.
His arm became abruptly light.
Silas swayed.
Garrick caught his shoulder.
For several seconds, he simply held him there.
Then his other arm came around Silas.
Silas froze.
His father hugged him.
Garrick Hale, who considered complete sentences an extravagance and physical affection apparently a limited natural resource, pulled him tightly against his chest.
Silas could hear his heartbeat.
Too fast.
He did not know what to do with that.
In his first life, affection had come with rules.
Teachers corrected.
Senior disciples tested.
The Order rewarded competence, discipline, obedience.
There had been loyalty.
There had even been love.
It simply had not often looked like this.
Silas slowly put one arm around his father's side.
Garrick's grip tightened once.
Then he released him.
The entire thing had lasted perhaps five seconds.
Garrick turned away as though it had not occurred.
Silas allowed him the fiction.
“What is it?”
“A war maul.”
“I noticed.”
Garrick looked back at him.
Silas waited.
“That wasn't the question.”
“No.”
His father went to the forge.
He stirred the dead coals with an iron rod.
“Then you're not getting the answer.”
“Why?”
“Because you don't need it yet.”
“That has never been a persuasive argument.”
“It isn't meant to persuade you.”
Silas watched him.
Garrick added kindling to the coals.
A little too much.
His hands were steady.
His breathing was not.
“Does it come from you?”
The rod stopped.
A beat passed.
“Yes.”
One fact.
Large enough to rearrange several others.
Silas said nothing.
Garrick resumed working the coals.
“And the Wildvine?”
This time his father did not answer at all.
That was also an answer.
Not a complete one.
Still useful.
Silas looked at his left palm.
“Ward said strong Blood Legacies have generations of records.”
The rod stopped again.
Silas continued.
“If this is yours, then someone has records.”
Garrick turned.
“No.”
“No records?”
“No asking.”
Silas studied him.
That was fear.
His father hid it under irritation better than most people would have hidden it under calm.
Still fear.
“Who would I be asking?”
“No one.”
“That narrows it down poorly.”
Garrick crossed the distance between them.
He crouched.
That alone made Silas pay attention.
Garrick almost never lowered himself to speak to him.
“Listen.”
Silas did.
“You can show the vine.”
His father's voice had changed.
The slack Briar Glen drawl was gone.
The words came clipped and exact.
“Ward knows about it. Jack knows. Soon the village will know. Fine.”
Silas remained still.
“The other one does not exist.”
“That's difficult from a philosophical standpoint.”
“Silas.”
He stopped.
Garrick's eyes were hard.
“Not to Ward. Not to the Concord. Not to a teacher. Not to another child because you decide you trust them. You do not summon it to test it. You do not use it because you're angry. You do not use it because it would make something easier.”
Silas felt the shape of the rule settling into place.
“What if hiding it would get me killed?”
Garrick's expression changed by a fraction.
“Then live.”
Silas nodded.
That answer he understood.
His father sat back on his heels.
“The vine is what people expect to dismiss.”
Silas looked at his right hand.
“Let them.”
He looked back.
Garrick's gaze had gone distant.
“If you can make the thing they overlook dangerous, you'll have choices.”
“And the maul?”
Garrick's mouth flattened.
“If people see that, choices disappear.”
That was the first explanation that mattered.
Not shame.
Not weakness.
Information.
Silas understood information.
He nodded once.
“I won't show it.”
Garrick stood.
“Good.”
Silas looked toward the cold forge.
“So Greyhaven—”
“No.”
Silas sighed.
Garrick almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he walked to the scrap pile.
He moved pieces aside until he found a lump of rough bloom iron, dark and ugly, perhaps the size of a loaf of bread.
It landed on the anvil with a heavy thud.
Silas stared at it.
“What is that?”
“Bad stock.”
He looked at his father.
Garrick looked back.
Silas began to suspect a trap.
“Very bad stock?”
“Cheap.”
“That answers a different question.”
“Plenty of slag. Uneven welds. Probably cracked inside.”
“And?”
Garrick pointed toward the forge.
“Make it useful.”
Silas looked at the bloom.
Then at the hammer.
Then at his father.
“With these arms.”
“Yes.”
“I dislike this lesson already.”
“You haven't started.”
“That is not improving it.”
Garrick took the bloom from the anvil and set it into the coals.
“Heat.”
Silas went to the bellows.
The forge woke slowly.
Orange appeared beneath the black.
Then yellow.
The air filled with coal smoke, old iron, and the bitter mineral smell of scale.
Garrick said nothing until the bloom had reached working heat.
Then he pulled it free.
“Watch.”
Silas did.
His father took up the heavier hammer.
Not the one Silas used.
A long-handled smith's hammer Silas normally saw reserved for thick stock and wagon work.
Garrick planted his feet.
The first blow landed.
Silas's attention sharpened.
He had watched his father forge before.
This was different.
The hammer did not begin in Garrick's arms.
It began at the floor.
Pressure through the feet.
Legs.
Hips.
Back.
Shoulder.
Arm.
Hammer.
The blow fell with a flat, brutal sound.
Scale jumped from the iron.
The hammer rebounded.
Garrick did not stop it.
He turned.
The rebound climbed into the next arc.
His hips shifted.
The hammer came down again.
Harder.
Third.
Fourth.
Each blow fed the next.
Not speed for its own sake.
A chain.
The hammer appeared almost weightless because Garrick never fought its weight.
He redirected it.
Silas forgot to blink.
The bloom began to change.
Garrick struck the face.
Turned the stock.
Struck an edge.
Turned again.
Compressed.
Folded.
Corrected.
Not once did the hammer wander.
Not once did he chase an error after it appeared.
Every strike was already preparing the geometry required by the next.
Silas felt a slow grin threatening.
This was familiar.
Not the technique.
The logic.
Blackthorn had taught the same principle in different language.
Never spend force twice.
Let one motion purchase the next.
Do not oppose momentum unless opposition is the point.
Garrick's hammer came down a final time.
The sound rang through the forge.
Then stopped.
He rested the hammer against his shoulder.
Silas realized he had been counting.
Thirty-six.
His father was not breathing hard.
That was irritating.
Garrick looked at him.
“What did you see?”
Silas stepped closer to the anvil.
“The rebound isn't waste.”
“Good.”
“You're using it to load the next strike.”
“Yes.”
“Your arms aren't driving most of the force.”
“No.”
“Legs and hips.”
“Mostly.”
Silas studied the flattened bloom.
“You changed the strike angle each time based on how the previous blow moved the material.”
Garrick's eyebrow moved.
Silas pointed.
“Here. You hit off-center twice to close the cold-looking seam before you drew the edge.”
Silence.
Silas looked up.
“Was that wrong?”
“No.”
Garrick handed him the hammer.
Silas accepted it.
The head immediately dragged his arms down.
“This one is too heavy.”
“Yes.”
Silas waited.
Garrick handed him his usual hammer instead.
“That was unnecessary.”
“Yes.”
Silas took his position.
His father moved one boot against Silas's left foot.
“Wider.”
Silas adjusted.
“Not that wide.”
He corrected again.
“Knees loose.”
Silas bent them slightly.
“Don't crouch.”
“I know how legs work.”
“Evidence is mixed.”
Silas ignored that.
He raised the hammer.
“Don't start with the arm.”
“I saw.”
“Seeing isn't doing.”
Silas breathed in.
Feet.
Legs.
Hips.
Back.
Shoulder.
Arm.
The hammer fell.
Clang.
Good contact.
The rebound kicked upward.
Silas caught it.
Too much.
His elbows absorbed the force.
The chain died.
Garrick said nothing.
Silas reset.
Second attempt.
Strike.
Rebound.
Turn.
He forced the second arc.
The hammer drifted.
The blow landed too close to the near edge.
“Stop.”
Silas did.
Garrick pointed at the mark.
“What did you do?”
“Turned too late.”
“Why?”
Silas replayed the motion.
Because he had been thinking about the hammer.
Not the body.
“My shoulders led.”
Garrick nodded.
“Again.”
Silas reheated the iron.
By the sixth attempt, sweat had soaked the back of his shirt.
By the tenth, his palms hurt.
By the fifteenth, he had linked two clean blows exactly once.
Garrick gave no praise.
He did not need to.
He also did not tell Silas to stop.
That was better.
At sunset, the bloom was smaller.
Not much.
The floor around the anvil was littered with black scale.
Silas's arms felt detached from the rest of him.
Garrick examined the iron.
“You didn't crack it.”
“High standards.”
“Tomorrow, do better.”
Silas looked at him.
“That sounded almost encouraging.”
“It wasn't.”
The next morning, he managed two linked strikes twice.
Three days later, he managed three.
Then lost the third badly enough that Garrick made him spend an hour flattening the damage.
“You're chasing it,” his father said.
Silas stared at the iron.
Again.
Of course.
He had corrected the second error rather than returning to the structure that produced it.
He reset the stock.
This time he stopped after the bad strike.
Reheated.
Studied the spread.
Changed his stance.
The next sequence landed clean.
Garrick said nothing.
Silas began to understand that silence had categories.
There was disinterest.
There was disapproval.
There was thought.
And there was the particular silence Garrick used when Silas had done something correctly and his father refused to make a ceremony out of it.
That one became his favorite.
Days organized themselves around iron.
Morning breathing before sunrise.
Breakfast.
Forge.
Errands.
Forge.
Lunch.
More forge.
In the evenings Silas reviewed what his body had failed to understand during the day.
Blackthorn training helped.
Not as much as he would have preferred.
Fine motor control did not create muscle.
Perfect Aether did not make five-year-old shoulders broad.
Knowledge did not shorten a hammer handle.
Physics remained stubbornly uninterested in his previous accomplishments.
Silas respected that.
It gave him something honest to solve.
After ten days, he could link five strikes before the line drifted.
After fifteen, seven.
His hands hardened.
His stance changed.
He learned that exhaustion announced itself first in precision, not strength.
He learned that iron had a brief interval between too cold and too soft where it answered exactly as expected.
He learned that Garrick could identify bad temperature from sound without looking.
He learned that his father drank less on days they forged together.
That last fact he did not mention.
Neither did Garrick.
Old Jack came by twice.
The first time he claimed to need a hinge repaired.
The hinge did need repair.
This did not explain why he spent ten minutes discussing the Greyhaven autumn term with the side of Garrick's head.
The second time, he brought a folded sheet.
“Supply list,” he said.
Garrick continued filing a drawknife.
Jack set the sheet beside him.
“Academy requires two shirts, winter coat, blanket, slate, chalk, one pair indoor shoes, one pair outdoor if the family can manage it.”
Garrick kept filing.
“Village covers books.”
File.
“Ruth Miller can alter Ben's old coat.”
File.
“Enrollment wagon leaves on the third Monday.”
File.
Jack's eyes narrowed.
“You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Any thoughts?”
“No.”
“Remarkable. Three months of progress and we've reached one syllable.”
Jack left.
Garrick did not touch the supply list.
Not while Jack was present.
Later that night, Silas found it beneath Garrick's mug.
The next morning it was still there.
A week afterward, the paper had acquired a burn mark along one corner and three fingerprints in coal dust.
It had not been thrown away.
Interesting.
Silas said nothing.
The bloom continued shrinking.
Slag left it in sparks and flakes.
Bad seams closed.
The metal became denser beneath repeated heat and pressure.
By the seventh week, what had begun as ugly porous stock had become a compact billet.
Not good steel.
Not yet.
But useful iron.
Garrick inspected it one afternoon.
“Better.”
Silas almost looked around to see who he meant.
His father noticed.
“Don't make me take it back.”
Silas hid a smile.
By the ninth week, he could maintain ten linked blows.
Eleven remained unreliable.
The failure irritated him enough that he spent two mornings practicing the transition without striking anything—feet turning on packed earth behind the smithy, hammer replaced by an ash pole.
On the third morning, Garrick stood in the doorway watching.
Silas stopped.
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
“You could have said something.”
“You were busy.”
“Was it wrong?”
“No.”
Garrick looked at the footprints Silas had worn into the dirt.
“Too much turn on the left.”
Silas looked down.
Adjusted.
Tried again.
The movement became smaller.
Faster.
More stable.
He looked up.
Garrick was already gone.
Twelve weeks after Awakening morning, autumn had deepened across Briar Glen.
The green along the ridges had begun turning rust, yellow, and dark red.
Wood smoke remained low in the mornings.
Apples appeared in baskets outside the Miller storehouse.
The mud had dried into hard wagon ruts, though the first serious rain would change that quickly.
Silas stood at the anvil.
The billet glowed orange.
He lifted the hammer.
One.
Rebound.
Turn.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The sound established a rhythm.
Five.
Six.
His arms wanted to take over.
He kept the force lower.
Seven.
Eight.
The billet shifted.
Silas adjusted the next strike before it landed.
Nine.
Ten.
Heat faded.
Not enough yet.
Eleven.
The hammer rose.
His feet turned.
Twelve.
The edge began to cool darker than the center.
One more.
Thirteen.
Silas caught the rebound rather than letting it choose the next strike.
He lowered the hammer.
The forge seemed unnaturally quiet.
Garrick stood by the workbench.
Silas had not heard him enter.
His father came closer.
He picked up the tongs and examined the billet.
Silas waited.
Garrick turned it.
Checked the edges.
Set it back down.
“Good.”
Silas stared at him.
Garrick stared back.
“That was praise.”
“Don't get used to it.”
“I should record the date.”
“You should heat the iron.”
Silas reached for the tongs.
Garrick stopped him.
“No.”
Silas looked up.
His father walked to the rack beside the forge.
For weeks, Garrick had allowed him to do one thing.
Reduce bad material.
Control force.
Control heat.
Control himself.
Now Garrick selected a narrow bar of clean iron and laid it across the anvil.
Beside it he placed a worn wood chisel.
The edge had been sharpened so many times the blade had shortened nearly an inch.
Silas looked from one to the other.
“What am I making?”
Garrick tapped the chisel.
“Another one.”
Silas picked up the old tool.
The bevel was uneven.
The shoulders were thick.
The tang had been drawn narrow enough to enter a wooden handle without splitting it.
Different problem.
Actual dimensions.
Actual purpose.
Failure would no longer mean ugly iron.
Failure would mean a bad tool.
Garrick leaned against the bench.
“You've spent three months learning how not to waste force.”
Silas turned the chisel in his hand.
“Now what?”
“Now learn not to waste material.”
Silas looked toward the clean iron bar.
Then toward the folded Greyhaven supply list still sitting beneath Garrick's chipped mug.
Neither of them mentioned it.
Garrick had not signed anything.
He had not agreed to Greyhaven.
He had not said Silas was leaving.
But the list had been in the forge for nearly three months.
It was stained with soot.
One corner was burned.
And Garrick Hale, who used scrap paper to start fires without the slightest sentimentality, had never once fed it to the coals.
Silas picked up the tongs.
For the moment, that was enough evidence.
He put the iron into the fire.