Date Point: 13y11m1w AV
Starship Drunk On Turkey, Messier 24
Chief Petty Officer Daniel “Chimp” Hoeff
The second they were aboard, Daar just went nuts. He dumped his pack and started clawing, scratching and biting at all the bits of him that he could reach. This apparently wasn’t enough, because he shook the floor mat to get the mud out of it before flopping down on his back atop it and squirming furiously.
Hoeff really couldn’t blame him. After all that time in the field all four of them were just gross with accumulated sweat, grime, muck and filth. He felt like a walking petri dish, but at least he didn’t have fur.
“You, uh, need some help there, Tiggs?”
Daar actually whined. “…Please.”
Walsh and Hoeff exchanged the unique long-suffering looks of men who had a sapient bear-dog-raccoon for a brother in arms, and Hoeff went to grab the combs from the ship’s hygiene room.
It was an involved process. Daar’s fur was matted, filthy and had all kindsa shit tangled in it despite his best efforts at keeping it clean in the field. In a rare reversal of fortunes, he claimed not to smell a thing, while the three humans got the full and delightful nasal bouquet of an animal that’d spent the last week playing in a ditch.
Hoeff didn’t comment on it, but Walsh knew they didn’t need to have a filter about these things. “I gotta say bud, ‘yer long fur is smelly as shit.”
Daar was busy trying to chew a burr out of the fur under his arm. “There’s…*rrgh*…a reason we clip it short…”
Coombes returned from the flight deck, having programmed the ship to get them back home as quietly as it could.
“Stopped ya from freezing to death though,” he observed, hauling off his t-shirt and throwing himself to the ground with a mat so Daar could put those grizzly paws to work on his aching back. Hoeff knew from experience that the big bastard wasn’t gentle but damn could he smash the hurt out of a guy’s muscles.
“Good armor against those fuckin’ bear-snakes too.” They’d run into three of the native predators on the way back, and Daar had proved equal to every one.
“Doom-noodle, bro,” Hoeff corrected him with a trollish grin. Daar hated that name for them.
Sadly, his trolling attempt was denied this time because Daar had just seen the scar on Coombe’s chest, the one below his left armpit. Sometime during his career, Coombes had taken a bullet through the lung in a serious way, and had seriously lucked out on it missing any major blood vessels too. Too bad every op he’d ever gone on was classified, because it would doubtless have made for a heck of a story.
Daar of course never remembered that. Or maybe he was just hopeful that something in Coombes’ career would turn out to not be classified. Either way, the moment he laid eyes on it he perked up. “Great Fyu! How come I never saw that one before, Boss?”
Coombes flopped and eyed the couch wistfully. “Hmm? Uh…” he examined it. “You have, though,” he said.
“I did?”
“Yeah. It’s the exit wound for this one.” He twisted and showed off the smaller splotch of discolored skin just below his shoulder blade.
“Where’d you get it?”
Coombes settled himself back on the mat and sighed. “Still can’t tell ya, Tiggs. Sorry.”
Daar seemed to forget his itching fur for a moment as he sat up. “…Sometimes I forget you can survive shit like that.”
“To be fair, the only reason I did is ‘cuz someone was right there to shove things into me and treat the collapsed lung.”
“Was it ‘Horse? Bet it was ‘Horse.”
“No comment, bro.”
“Aww.”
“You ever gonna tell us what you keep plotting with Genshi?”
Daar shook out the fur at the scruff of his neck and chittered. “No comment, bro.”
“Right.”
Daar yelped as Walsh dragged the comb through a particularly nasty tangle, but Walsh seemed satisfied with the result and the next few strokes of the comb were easier and cleaner.
“There ya go,” he said, setting the comb aside. “And now…you need a flea bath, Tiggs. In fact we all do.”
“Can’t I just dust-bath?” Daar whined.
“Parasites, bro. Deathworld. You know that. Also, you literally smell like blood and shit.”
“At least those are natural smells…” Daar grumbled, but hauled himself up onto four paws. “That flea shampoo smells like Momma Yanyi’s chemistry lessons when I was a young cub.”
“You’d rather smell like shit than smell clean?” Walsh asked him.
“See, that’s somethin’ you humans do that’s weird. You can’t smell anything for shit, but you have all these good and bad smells you complain about. It’s all…just smell, man. I’ll take real over fake any day.”
“Yeah, yeah. You remember how last time you said that ‘Base threatened to do a whole powerpoint thing proving why we have good and bad smells because deathworld, right?”
“I find that hard to believe given that Bozo likes to lick his own butthole.”
“Dude. People ain’t dogs. We are allegedly a bit smarter than them…”
Daar made a resigned huffing sound in the back of his chest and padded reluctantly toward the shower. “Let’s just get this over with…”
Hoeff wound up having to wait nearly half an hour, ten minutes of which was Walsh and Daar cleaning the shower which had wound up looking like the “Worst Toilet In Scotland” from that old British movie Murray had shown them. The big bear emerged smelling a lot better and with a cheery expression, which—
Coombes saw the mischief coming just a fraction of a second too late. “Daar, don’t you fucking dare—!”
Too late. He bounded over and shook himself all over everyone and everything.
There was one of those pauses where everyone’s brains reset themselves after enduring something unpleasant, broken by Hoeff as he wiped his face. “…You. Asshole.”
“Serves you right! It’s a goddamned Bear-snake. I will also accept snake-bear.”
“You hold grudges over the weirdest shit…” Hoeff hauled himself upright. “I’ma shower now.”
“Sure…” Coombes waved a hand vaguely. He looked like he was more interested in falling asleep.
Not Walsh. Before Hoeff disappeared into the shower he overheard Daar groan about the TV. Probably more Gaoian soap operas. Hoeff always liked them. He didn’t know if it was the cultural difference or the simple novelty of it, but the workhouse sagas were weirdly and hugely popular on Earth these days.
Daar detested them. Even over the sound of the running water Hoeff could hear him complaining at length about how none of the characters had any functioning social instincts and would have been evicted from every workhouse he knew for their bullshit.
Hoeff always showered quickly and prowled his way out of the shower still soaking wet, and grabbed a towel on the way out.
“Dude, soap operas are always bullshit that way.”
Walsh wasn’t having any of it. “Bruh, don’t fuckin’ call it a soap opera!” he objected. “This is way better.”
“Only ‘cuz you like it.” Hoeff hit the lockers to grab the clean clothes he’d stashed there ready for this moment. Heaven felt like clean underwear after far too long in the bush. “Your turn, Boss.”
Coombes groaned at length, but stood up easily and fluidly enough despite his complaining. He was always last through the showers just because he liked to soak good and long when he could.
Hoeff, meanwhile, grabbed one of the treats he’d left behind in the galley for himself. He’d have preferred a dip, but the body-is-a-temple culture in the SOR was something else and if he chewed now, he’d have Daar whining at him about how unhealthy it was all the way back. And then he’d have ‘Horse to deal with back at Cimbrean…
Besides…He was a little guy. No way around that, he just didn’t have the reserves that the other big fuckers on the team could keep. That meant that long missions always left him drained and hungry, so there was another way to relax. If he couldn’t have nicotine he could damn well demolish an entire jar of Nutella with a spoon; an act which, as a bonus, never failed to make Daar drool enviously.
He flung himself down on the couch and tried to ignore the Gaoian’s plaintive whining. Daar loved the smell of Nutella but it gave him the shits somethin’ fierce. Something about hazelnut oil just did not agree with the murderbearcoon’s GI tract.
Well. Maybe one taste wouldn’t hurt. He offered the spoon and Daar took his treat, and said nothing more.
The show was winding to a close when something that had been bugging at Hoeff finally became more than he could bear.
“…Hey, Boss?”
Coombes grunted. He’d drifted off in thought, and from what Hoeff could see they weren’t happy thoughts. “Yeah?
“The tablet said ‘Hello again, Coombes’ to you…”
Coombes nodded slowly. “I…really don’t wanna think about it.”
“Walsh? It spoke to you, too.”
Walsh’s good humor evaporated. “…Yeah.”
“…You two know somethin’?”
Coombes rested his head back and stared at the ceiling. “It’s all classified and there’s…shit, man. The details are a fuckin’ nightmare. I can’t say more than that.”
There was a pause. Walsh broke it in the end with a brotherly embrace. “Y’okay bro?”
“…Was thinkin’ I might have a word with Mears when I get the chance,” Coombes admitted. Abruptly, he surged to his feet. “Let’s just pop the stasis on this bitch and be home already,” he declared.
“…Right.”
Stasis was a timeless instant like plucking a guitar string. It was over instantly, but the sense of something much longer having happened was there in the back of the mind. Or possibly that was just an illusion, brought on by knowing it had happened.
Either way, the moment after Coombes hit the button, they were being hailed for boarding and customs inspection at the Cimbrean border checkpoint.
That was no longer the HEAT’s job, thankfully. Armstrong Station was home to a force of border patrol officers. Incoming traffic was shepherded to the station by one of the patrolling naval ships, but nowadays there was no lengthy wait while a shuttle came out carrying dudes in spacesuits. Instead, the engineers had built an inspection gantry a few hundred kilometers behind the station in its orbit. It was the next best thing to nothing, just a handful of docking bays and mooring points held together by a lattice of structural beams, but it was enough for the job.
The pressurized environment of a docking bay made the whole process massively swifter and easier. The ship was thoroughly picked over in a matter of minutes, their brains were scanned, and the black case containing the fruits of their mission was cleared to proceed purely on the authority of an AEC travel orders card with its Magic Blue Stamp.
Hoeff didn’t know if the ink was made from the blood of newborn royal children, or the souls of Irish fae, but somehow, somewhere, it had been decided in the legendary times of yore that only the vast powers of the Magic Blue Stamp could protect the border of any NATO-allied nation. For all the border dudes knew, that box could be an interstellar pizza delivery or a twenty kilo antimatter bomb. Didn’t matter: Coombes just showed them the card, and thanks to the green condition of his brain it went uncontested and unmolested.
From there, they were slave-jumped to a beacon inside the Cimbrean planetary shield and that was that. The ship did the rest of the work on autopilot, so they entertained themselves during the fifty minute descent by watching another episode of Planet Earth III at Daar’s insistence. He’d had enough of workhouse soap operas.
Powell was waiting for them on the concrete.
“Did you lads make contact?” He asked. Hoeff tried not to grimace. Powell usually made at least a little small talk—his straight-to-business greeting wasn’t an encouraging sign.
Coombes handed him the copper Faraday cage bag with Hoeff’s tablet inside it. “Yessir,” he said. “Whatever it was, it made contact in a weird way. It took over Chimp’s tablet and downloaded a bunch of stuff. We turned it off and stuffed it in the bag…”
Powell nodded, and handed the bag off to that black-furred Gaoian with the huge ears. Meereo. “Aye, thank you,” he said, and immediately confirmed Hoeff’s suspicions. “Now for the bad news. We’ve got another mission for you already so you only get two days turnaround. And Daar?”
Daar straightened from his usual shambling posture into something straighter and more attentive. “Yes sir?”
“I’d go back to a short cut if I were you. It’s hot and humid where you’re going.”
Daar whimpered almost inaudibly. “Yes sir.”
Powell gave him a rare look of sympathy. “Aye. Go rest up, lads. We’ll take care of your stuff. Meet at the warehouse tomorrow afternoon at 1400, we’ll brief the mission and all your gear. Ship should be turned around and ready by then.”
He gave them an intense looking-over almost like being inspected on parade, but it ended in a short-lived expression of tight satisfaction. “Dismissed.”
It was a surreal end to a surreal mission. All those soaking, filthy days in the forest had come to an end practically with a snap of their fingers, and they were turning around onto something else straight away. No downtime, no debrief, nothing.
No closure, either. Whatever had spoken to them via the tablet in Meereo’s paws had known Coombes’ name. But watching it go, Hoeff knew for absolutely certain that he’d never know that story.
He sighed, put it out of his mind, and trudged toward the showers. At least he could finally get some hot water and a dry bed.
He’d trade a mystery for those basic comforts anyday.
Date Point: 13y11m1w AV
Lakebeds National Park, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Julian Etsicitty
“…Confession time?”
“Mm?”
“…Cimbrean is beginning to feel like home.”
“…It is, yeah.”
There was never going to be any doubt that Cimbrean was an alien world. The trees were…well, they were trees, because it turned out that wood was a great thing to make big plants from no matter what planet they evolved on. And when it came to extracting chemical energy from sunlight in a way that living organisms could metabolize, photosynthesis was the only game in town. There were other options, but none that were quite as efficient.
And leaves were leaf-shaped because leaf-shaped was a good shape for a leaf.
Life, it turned out, selected for what worked. And what worked on one planet tended to work on other planets too. Which meant that nature kept coming up with the same solutions again and again.
But they weren’t Earth trees. They weren’t fir, spruce, cedar and pine. Hickories, cherries, oaks and maples weren’t native to Cimbrean.
One day, the native pinkwoods, sandbarks, fuzzy puddle and chopstick trees would all be gone but for now they could still be found in their native habitat. Still being roosted in by native avalons, crabwings and perwicketties. Still with Cimbrean Tea growing in thickets around their roots.
Julian wasn’t about to miss an opportunity like that. So when their four-day break came along at the end of two non-stop weeks of work and training, he dragged the girls out of bed at what Allison called “the-fuck-time-do-you-call-this o’ clock” and they’d hiked twenty minutes in the gray-blue pre-dawn light through loose deciduous forest still soft with the scent of last night’s rain.
They sat on the flat rocks in the middle of river Dagnabbit and let the cold water flow over their bare feet while they ate their breakfast and watched the sun come up.
Xiù wiggled her toes in the sandy gravel and smiled. “Yeah…Home,” she agreed wistfully.
“It’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Julian mused. “Just us, a little house and lots of land.”
“We had that in Minnesota,” Allison pointed out.
“It was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Yeah it was…” Allison sighed. “…sometimes I dream about that house.”
“Me too.”
“Me three,” Xiù sighed.
“Just…us,” Julian mused.
“And the beavers,” Allison teased.
“And…kids.” Xiù blushed.
“Yeah,” Allison sighed, surprising them both. It took her a second to notice them staring. “…What? I fucked up as a mom once. It’d be nice to try again…Do it properly…Someday.”
“Someday,” Xiù nodded.
“Kids would be nice,” Julian agreed.
Allison grinned. “Let’s face it, our kids would be fucking gorgeous.”
“And smart.”
Julian chuckled. “And we’d spoil them rotten.”
There was a long, wistful silence full of the texture of water and wind in the trees, punctuated by alien birdsong and the occasional splash of a leaping alien fish.
Allison shook herself out of her reverie. “…Someday,” she repeated. “Maybe.”
“When we can,” Julian said.
Xiù nodded. “When we’re not needed any more.”
Somehow that was a more melancholy thought than Julian felt prepared for. To judge by their expressions, the same was true for the girls.
Rather than let them dwell on it he reached out to either side and pulled them both close, a gesture that was alarmingly easy with his newfound strength. They felt lighter now, and more fragile, even though intellectually he knew they were just as tough as ever. His months of ongoing training with Warhorse had him tipping the scales impressively and on the hunt for more generous clothing. It was a heck of a confidence-builder…and also a little scary.
Thank fuck for Allison: She had a sixth sense, sometimes. “Careful, Etsicitty,” she teased, and jabbed him in the ribs. “Those guns aren’t toys.”
Julian grinned and kissed her. “I’ll be careful.”
“Good boy. Gotta practice safe…” she trailed off as Xiù’s phone rang. “Thought we weren’t supposed to be called today?”
“Unless…” Xiù fished the phone from her pocket and swiped at the cute little mouse hologram it was projecting. “Xiù Chang?”
Julian couldn’t quite make out what she was hearing, but he recognized Firth’s cadences regardless. He had a voice like rock-crushing machinery even in tiny tinny ear-strain sound.
“…Oh. Wow. Yeah! Uh…well, we’re hiking in Lakebeds Park right now. Oh, good. ”
“Babe?” Allison asked.
Xiù lowered the phone. “…The JETS team is back,” she said. “And they’ll be ready in a few days.”
Allison threw her head back and aimed a relieved sort-of-smile at the sky. “Jesus. It’s about fucking time.”
“Heard that!” Firth called over the phone. Xiù pressed it to her ear again.
“Okay, well…they have their own ship, right?” She nodded, and then her eyebrows knotted together. “They called it what?…Really? That’s, um…okaaay. No, I mean…yeah, I guess if he owns it I guess he can call it what he likes, but…really?”
“Babe?” Allison asked. Xiù gave her an I’ll-tell-you-later shrug.
“No, we’ll enjoy the rest of our day here,” she told Firth. “I’ll call Chiune Station and tell them to prep Misfit but…Yeah. See you tomorrow, then. You too.”
With the call over and done with she put the phone back in her pocket wearing a complex medley of emotions that were probably identical to Julian’s own. Elation, yes. Relief. Release. Uncertainty. The mild, addictive terror of being about to leap into the unknown again.
“…Well,” she said. “So much for our days off.”
Date Point: September 13y11m1w1d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes,
RE: MSGT Derek Coombes
Master Sergeant Coombes made a point of finding time in his busy schedule to see me today. He has only a few days of turnaround time before his next mission, but an event during Operation SILENT ARCHER is preying on his mind, and he was keen to process it so that he can, in his words, “have a clear head for the next one.” He spent most of the session pacing the room, though he did sit down toward the end of the session and played with the therapy dog.
He is a career operator with a storied and heavily classified history of work as a Green Beret before transferring to become NCO in charge of the inaugural Joint Extra-Terrestrial Scouts unit. Three years ago he participated in Operation EMPTY BELL (see attached notes) following which he was awarded a Purple Heart after suffering a gunshot wound to the lung: said injury is now completely healed and does not trouble him.
According to his records he sought counselling after that mission, in which two of his squad were KIA. He states that he “needed a little help” to cope with his injury and with their deaths but denies any long-term difficulties.
To summarize: Operation EMPTY BELL was an escort operation initiated by an agent of BIG HOTEL, who wished to provide intelligence but requested to speak with a specific individual, referred to hereafter as BLOWN ASH.
Coombes states that BLOWN ASH treated his wound after he was shot, and that she, quote: “literally saved [his] life.” He expressed the belief that there “was some chemistry there” and confided that he recently turned down her invitation to a dinner date.
During operation SILENT ARCHER, Coombes and his unit made contact with an anonymous intel source. He states categorically that this contact was not human, and that it appeared to be a sapient digital entity of some sort. He describes that the contact’s method of communication was “strange” and “janky” but that it unmistakably claimed to be a version of BLOWN ASH.
When asked to clarify, he states that the contact used a clear and identifiable image of BLOWN ASH to introduce itself and described itself as having been, in its words, “StolenKidnappedTaken” and “InterrogatedDecompiledMurdered.” He recalls that it claimed to have somehow rebuilt itself, and that it claimed to not be the same person and is, quote: “NotSelf” and “NotWhole.”
When asked how such a thing might be possible he simply shrugged. He describes his own emotional state as “confused” and “off-balance.” I asked him whether he felt that he has in some way failed BLOWN ASH, to which he replied in the affirmative.
I reassured him that his disturbed feelings are probably the normal and healthy reaction to such a unique circumstance. He suggested that he will probably feel better with “time, hard work and some perspective” and I suspect he is right. I have given him some “mood-boosting” breathing exercises to try and asked him to see me again once his next assignment is complete: he assured me that he will do so, and left my office in a visibly better mood than when he arrived.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman
Date Point: 13y11m1w3d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Near 3Kpc Arm
The Singer
The night of Tarek’s death had changed things for the worse. It wasn’t that anybody blamed Yan for what had happened, or what he did…but the peace had broken, and was now only being held together by fear. One or two of the smaller tribes, the ones furthest out on the fringes of the settled valley, had already decided to take up their camps and scatter to the winds.
The remainder…were unhappy. Everybody had heard Tarek’s words, and as idiotic as he’d been he had put questions in their head. Questions about Yan and his motives. Questions about steel, and whether it was a good magic.
Questions about the strange, quiet ‘Sky-Thinker’ who had taken that magic and made it his like nobody else. Vemik tasted of the forge now, and nothing else. Even when he went on a hunt, even after the nights he spent in the Singer’s hut, the sharp, sour taste of steel hung around him like a fog.
To the Singer it tasted strong, and excited. To others who had never met the Sky-People, it was beginning to taste evil.
The Singers were in agreement—it was Taking-Magic of the most powerful kind. As powerful as the giving-magic of childbirth, but no woman could bear a child as often or as surely as Vemik and his apprentices could make good steel tools.
The balance was failing. And with it, the peace.
Which was why The Singer had decided to learn it.
Singers and Dancers stood between the magics: They learned both. They healed and fed and raised the children and kept the homes as women, but they hunted as men. Each wore the blood-markings of her first kill forever, tattooed into her face.
If she had to wear the burn-scars of a ‘smith’ as well, then so be it.
Plus, it would be good to take Vemik’s mind away from his troubles. He had been too sombre since Tarek’s death and the taking of his tribe. She missed his boyish enthusiasm—the intense, unhappy man beating on steel throughout the day was not the man she loved.
Though he always had a smile for her.
“…You look rested today.”
“Yewi’s child came easily,” The Singer told him. “Strong, and warm…he barely cried, too.”
Vemik nodded. He didn’t stop working as he spoke, but continued to treadle the leather ‘bellows’ with his foot. “That’s good. I always worry for you after difficult births.”
“Worry after the mother,” she told him. He nodded and half-smiled, and she saw in the lines around that smile that he was exhausted to his soul. “…And after yourself,” she added. “Your dreams still haunt you?”
He nodded, and glanced over his shoulder as his tail reached out to wrap around the tongs and deliver them to his hand.
“I had a new one last night,” he confessed, reaching into the glowing coals with them to turn today’s blade over.
“So that’s why I woke up cold and alone…”
She meant to tease him. Instead he nodded, and gave her a sorrowful look.
“…What was it?” she asked.
Vemik shrugged. “I never remember clearly. Faces. Fire. But this time…this time I dreamed that the Sky-People really were some kind of dream we had. Or a trick by some prankster god. Something…I dreamed they weren’t real.”
“I can see why you came to the forge,” she said, and reached out to clean a black smudge from his face. “To have something real of theirs.”
He nodded again. Apparently the steel in the coals was satisfactory because he pulled it out, laid it on the anvil and gave it a solid blow with the ham mer. Stuff that was stronger and harder than stone when cold instead moved like clay as he hit it.
“You’re making it a different shape?” she asked.
“This is…a bit like making something that’s an axe and a knife in one tool,” Vemik said. “It’s heavier at the end so it swings with more strength, but the blade comes all the way down. It will cut young saplings for poles like they’re made of nothing.”
“Did Jooyun teach you that?”
“No. I just…the sky-word is ’expewimented’ I think.”
Five more hammer blows and Vemik was apparently satisfied. He thrust the blade back into the forge with a crunch of charcoal and ash.
“…They should have been back by now,” he said.
“They said it would take time. And that they might not be able to come back, too.”
“I know. I know all that. I just…” Vemik closed his eyes for a second. “Our daughter died, Singer. And now men have died and women were…Taken. Because we came here. Because they told us to.”
That wound was still bleeding for her as well. “You blame them?”
“No.” He shook his head fiercely. “I…only want it to have been worth it. But I don’t even know if it can be.”
The Singer nodded, and hugged him close.
“I feel the same,” she said. “She was my child too. I…if the gods themselves had come before me and told me to choose between ending her life myself, or watch them destroy all the People…”
“Your thoughts know the right thing to do, but your breath knows differently,” Vemik finished.
“…Yes.”
Vemik held her for a few minutes, until the steel was ready again. He picked it up and she watched him hammer on its edge, forging it most of the way toward sharpness. His apprentice would still spend a day with several wet stones making it properly sharp, but it was a beginning.
“…They taught us a valuable lesson, at least,” she told him as he returned it to the forge for the last blast of fierce heat that came before the blade was plunged into water.
“What?”
“They told us to look to ourselves to solve our problems,” she said.
“That they did. We can’t look to them to make our lives better. We have to craft our own steel.”
“…Even if steel is part of the problem?” The Singer asked, carefully. Vemik’s foot paused in treadling the bellows.
“…I know the talk,” he said eventually, and his foot started moving again. “And what some of them call me. Vemik evil-touched. Vemik sky-poisoned. When Yan hears them he makes the man who said it take it back…”
“And you?”
“The day a man is foolish enough to say those things where I can hear him will be the last day he says them,” Vemik promised solemnly. “But so far, none of them have.”
“You aren’t eager for that to change…” the Singer observed.
“No.”
“Good.” She brushed a fleck of debris out of his crest. “I know the other men have to see your strength, but you are different, Vemik. You always were…And I like it. I don’t want you to be like my uncle.”
“…You don’t?”
“We have enough Yan,” she said, and kissed him. “We need a Vemik too. But steel is causing problems, my love. The other Singers worry that there is too much taking-magic now and that it may soon become wild, like stampeding Werne. And if they’re right, Tarek’s tribe will only be the first.”
Vemik thought about that for some time but his foot never stopped moving. He thought and worked until the blade was brighter than she had seen before, and then in one smooth movement he plucked it from the fire and thrust it into the long, thin clay water bowl he kept beside the forge.
Underneath the vicious roar of bubbling water, there was a clear and sharp ping!
“…Godshit.”
“What?”
Vemik grunted, and removed the quenched blade from the water. It hissed like meat cooking on a hot rock, and steam flooded off it as he studied it ferociously in the sunlight.
“…Ruined,” he declared. “Cracked all the way through.”
She blinked, genuinely surprised. She hadn’t known that was even possible. “Cracked? How?”
“It’s…each thing I make has a different…love of heat. I think I made this one too thin and it got too cold too fast. They’re…picky about how you treat them.”
“You make it sound like steel is alive.”
“It almost feels like it is, sometimes. With some blades I have have to be gentle, while others just can’t be beaten too hard.”
“…Hmm.”
“Singer?”
“Nothing. Well…something. Maybe. If it’s almost alive then perhaps this isn’t as much of a taking-magic as we thought. You make it sound like you have to nurture them…”
Vemik trilled softly, the first time she’d heard him laugh in too long.
“You know,” he said, “If you want to learn how to make it you only have to ask.”
“…You know me too well,” The Singer told him, but she was trilling a laugh herself. “But…yes. I think it might be wise. The peace is being picky right now. Perhaps if a Singer learned this magic, it would dispel some of the fear.”
“Jooyun didn’t like the idea of it being a Taking-Magic,” Vemik recalled thoughtfully. “Maybe…maybe that would be wise.”
“So teach me.”
“Yan has all his apprentices make tongs first…” Vemik mused, “But for you…I think I have a different idea. We’ll need…most of the same tools, actually.”
He turned and collected a few tools that were hung behind the anvil. “Hmmm…Center punch, yes….and a drift…yes. Actually, that should be all we need.” He turned around and grinned the way he always did when a new thought was filling him with life. She was glad to have him back.
“You’ll find this useful!” he promised. “You can hang things with it, tie things to it, weave a basket around it…Godshit, I bet you’ll have all the other Singers jealous! And it should look beautiful too, with a strong ‘Damascus’ pattern…”
“Good…” The Singer said slowly, growing just a little impatient now that she was involved, “but what are we making?”
Vemik grinned at her.
“It’s called a ‘ring’,” he said.