Chapter 131| What Blood Chooses

The forge beneath Arsweiss Tower never went cold. Theo had grown up believing that was a metaphor until he was seven years old and his grandfather held his hand an inch from the coal bed just to prove it wrong.

That was the first lesson. Fire does not care whose son you are.

Tonight the fire was banked low, more ember than flame, and Theo sat cross-legged in front of it with a half-finished shortsword across his knees, running a whetstone down an edge that didn’t need it anymore. He did that when he was thinking. His father called it a nervous habit. Theo called it the only quiet he ever got.

’You’re going to wear a groove into that blade,’ Nadia said from the doorway, and he didn’t jump, because he’d heard her coming from the hall three rooms back. He always heard her coming. That was the joke between them, the one neither of them said out loud — that a Sugate letting herself be heard at all was a kind of gift.

’It’s already got a groove,’ he said. ’I put it there on purpose. Fuller, not flaw.’

’I know what a fuller is, Theo.’ She crossed the room without asking and folded herself down onto the stone beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, not quite. Nadia never quite touched anything she hadn’t decided to. ’I grew up around your father’s work. I know a groove from a flaw better than most of the fighters carrying your blades into the arena tomorrow.’

’Fair.’

They sat like that for a while. The forge ticked and settled, coals shifting under their own weight, and somewhere above them Theo could hear the tower’s night staff moving crates of tournament banners into storage. Thirty-two parties. The Descenders would be one bracket among them, and depending on the draw, possibly gone by the second round, and Theo found that he minded less than he probably should.

’You’re not thinking about the fight,’ Nadia said. It wasn’t a question. She rarely bothered with those.

’No.’

’Then what.’

He set the whetstone down and turned the shortsword over, watching the banked coal light slide along the fuller he’d cut into it with his own hands, the first blade of his life his father hadn’t touched at any point in the process. ’I keep thinking about the order forms,’ he said. ’The Emberline commission came in yesterday. Forty longswords, matched temper, matched balance, delivery before the semifinal round in case anyone advances that far. My father signed off on it in about the time it takes to say yes. Forty blades, Nadia. For a party that might lose in the first round and never draw one of them again.’

’That upsets you.’

’It doesn’t upset me. It’s just — ’ He stopped, tried again. ’Every blade my family makes goes into someone else’s hand. Someone else’s fight. My whole life I’ve watched my father build weapons for champions and never once pick one up himself, and I used to think that was because he didn’t want to. And then I got old enough to understand he wasn’t allowed to. The name Arsweiss doesn’t fight. It arms. That’s the family business, and I am, apparently, a very expensive part of the inventory.’

Nadia didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice had gone flatter, the particular flatness she used when she was saying something true instead of something comfortable. ’At least your family lets you hold the finished product. Mine doesn’t let me finish anything. A Sugate contract ends when the target stops breathing, and then someone else writes the report and someone else collects the fee and I am, apparently, a delivery mechanism with good aim.’

’That’s not why you’re fighting tomorrow, though.’

’No.’ A small, private not-quite-smile. ’That’s why I’m fighting at all. This — ’ she gestured, vaguely, at the tower, the forge, the banners being stacked somewhere above them, at the whole strange architecture of a tournament neither of their families had asked them to enter ’ — this is the first thing either of us picked. That’s the only reason the Descenders exist. Not because your father wanted a walking advertisement for his steel, and not because mine wanted a quieter kind of asset. Because you asked me to co-lead a guild instead of just supplying one, and I said yes before I let myself think about why.’

Theo looked at her for a long moment. In the low coal light her eyes were unreadable in the way they always were, dark and level and giving away exactly as much as she intended and not one thing more, and he had known her for six years and still couldn’t always tell when that stillness was armor and when it was just Nadia.

’Why did you say yes,’ he asked. ’Really.’

She considered the question like she considered everything, weighing it before she’d let it leave her mouth. ’Because you’re the only person who’s ever handed me a weapon and not immediately told me who to point it at,’ she said finally. ’You just said, here, it’s yours, do what you want with it. Nobody in my family has ever said that to me. Not once. So I said yes to the guild because I wanted to find out what I’d do with a life nobody was pointing.’

The coals shifted again, a soft collapsing sound, and neither of them moved to feed the fire.

’For what it’s worth,’ Theo said, ’I don’t think we’re losing in the first round.’

’You don’t know our draw yet.’

’Doesn’t matter. I forged everything the Descenders are carrying tomorrow with my own hands, start to finish, first time in my life. I’m not losing the first blade I ever got to call mine.’

Something in Nadia’s expression eased, just slightly, the flatness cracking into something warmer underneath it, and she reached over and took the shortsword out of his hands, testing its weight the way she tested everything, quick and precise and utterly without wasted motion.

’Good balance,’ she said. ’Better than your father’s, honestly. Don’t tell him I said that.’

’Wouldn’t dream of it.’

’He’d only find a way to bill someone for the compliment.’

Theo laughed, low and surprised, the kind of laugh that came out of him rarely enough that Nadia glanced over at the sound of it like she was cataloguing something worth remembering. Outside, far above the forge, one of the tournament banners caught in a draft and snapped once against the tower stone, sharp as a blade clearing a sheath, and somewhere in that sound was tomorrow, and the bracket neither of them had seen yet, and thirty other parties who had no idea that the two quietest names on the roster had spent the night before the opening ceremony sitting by a banked forge fire, working out — for the first time, out loud, together — what it might mean to fight for something that belonged to no one but themselves.

’Get some sleep,’ Nadia said eventually, setting the sword back across his knees with a care that didn’t match the flatness she’d used minutes before. ’Descenders don’t lose because we’re tired. We lose because we hesitate. So don’t.’

’I won’t if you won’t.’

’I never do.’

She was gone from the doorway before he’d finished the thought, quiet as she’d come, and Theo sat by the dying coals a while longer, running his thumb along the fuller of the one blade in Arsweiss Tower that had never belonged to anyone’s business but his own, and found, for the first time in longer than he could remember, that he was looking forward to tomorrow.