“It’s coming, it’s coming,” growled Llun. He didn’t mind Garmun sitting around while he worked. But no one…no one was allowed to break the hallowed moments when the fire and the metal fused to become something new, something sacred.
“By the Great Father, Llun, I only asked for nails, not works of art.”
Llun twitched at the name. Great Father, my muscular left bicep. Why is the Raven renaming himself now, of all times? Does he imagine we’ve forgotten how he took everything from us?
“What is it about you master builders? What ails you? Too many children?”
Garmun turned purple, opened his mouth to speak, then choked on himself. He had no wife, but his illegitimate progeny filled half of Vasyllia’s first reach. Crude people snickered that being so fat was normal after so many pregnancies.
“Peace, Brother Garmun,” said Llun. “They’re all but done. And I promise you they’ll be the hardiest, longest-lasting nails you’ll find in all Vasyllia.”
And the only ones with a raven etched on the nail’s head. May his memory be forever cursed, and may every hammer stroke hasten the time of his demise…
“You mean the most exquisite nails in Vasyllia, no doubt,” the fat man complained. “I’ve never seen anyone so taken with his own talent. Don’t you know that your little frills and personal touches make no difference? Competence! Competence! That’s what the market wants.”
“The market, with all its frippery and cheap wares, can burn in the fires of the land of the dead for all I care.” It slipped out. Llun hoped the hammer would be distraction enough. But he had never been blessed by fortune.
“Your talk smacks of the Outer Lands, you fool. Be careful no one in the Great Father’s good graces overhears you.”
“Overhears what?” said a new voice from the doorway.
The stranger who walked in was the antithesis of Garmun—short and wiry like a ratter. Everything about him suggested potential action—his smile, just on the verge of malice, his hands, holding his thick belt as though it were someone’s throat, the sharp line of his cheekbones, suggesting some nomad blood. His physicality was so overwhelming that it almost distracted from the dog’s scalp hanging from his belt.
So this must be one of that new department that the Gumiren—those filthy nomad invaders from the South—had concocted for collaborators. What was it called? The Consistory, yes. The secret police of the Raven. Dog-men, the commons called them. A kind name for a traitor against his own people.
“I’m not open to new customers,” said Llun, trying to keep his tone light.
“That’s a relief,” the stranger said, with more gentleness than Llun expected. “No one will bother us, then.”
He closed the door and dropped the black curtain over the door-window.
“What a pleasant smithy you have here, Brother Llun.”
Llun stiffened as the stranger began to look around the smithy. Like a bitch on the scent, the stranger’s pointed face bore down on the cluttered left counter of the smithy. He pulled out two interlacing shields of iron leaf-work tracery so fine they almost looked woven. Each held a heraldic icon of a raven in flight.
“Well, that’s…” He didn’t finish, but to Llun’s surprise it sounded like he was about to say “beautiful.” What? A Raven’s man actually admiring beauty for its own sake?
Llun’s stomach churned. It was all wrong: there was genuine admiration in the stranger’s eyes. He appreciated the shields as things of beauty, not as objects to buy or sell. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The Raven’s men followed a script. They were supposed to ask where Llun was going to sell these useless trinkets, and when he hemmed and hawed about beauty and artistry, they would threaten Llun with something horrible.
Llun had seen enough of the Gumiren’s work to know that the threats of the collaborators were never idle—weavers with one eye burned out just so their depth perception would no longer be of any use, sword-wrights with their right hands chopped off at the wrist, potters with broken feet.
Damn them all, he thought bitterly.
But this one was admiring decorative shields that had no practical use whatsoever. Llun had made them merely for the sake of beauty.
“What possessed you to make such a thing?”
Llun’s hammer stopped in mid-air. It was the choice of words. “Possessed.” No, this was no mere inquisitor. This man understood the creative process. What it means to make something, and how it feels to be taken by the hand of the Maker.
“It made itself,” said Llun, hesitating. “I was just the instrument.”
The stranger gasped with pleasure, as though Llun’s words had given him a taste of something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. Maybe this was an impostor? A motley fool who put on the dog-scalp to ridicule the Consistory? But such people did not walk the streets for long before their bodies were used as decorations for lamp-posts.
“Llun,” said the dog-man, and looked Llun directly in the eyes.
The lack of the “Brother” before Llun’s name frightened him more than the direct gaze. This collaborator was something new. Yes, he was likely an artist. An artist of torture and death.
“Llun, you stand there, gawking like a fool, telling me you made something for the sheer pleasure of artistry?”
The stranger’s right index finger caressed the outline of the raven, as though he could memorize shapes better with his finger. Could he see it, the true picture? The hammer slipped in Llun’s hand and almost landed on his thumb. Careful…
“Yes.” Llun’s voice didn’t remain as steady as he would have liked. The stranger noticed. His smile was an adder’s smile.
“Who taught you to waste your time like this?”
So they had come to it at last. The stranger wanted Llun to be an informer to the collaborators, a friend of the dogs.
Not on my life.
“No one,” said Llun, continuing to beat the nails. “Don’t think I use my work-time on these things. I give all the Great Father’s time to my customers, as anyone, even fat Garmun here, will tell you.” The builder looked like he wanted to kill Llun and run away from him at the same time. “I do this…art…in my own time.”
The stranger raised his eyebrows slightly, faintly amused. Llun immediately realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have said anything about having the luxury of time for himself.
“What a shame,” said the Consistory man. “You should rest during your free time, Brother Llun. It will help you make better nails and horseshoes and braziers. Useful things. Will you accept a gift from the Great Father? A gratis pass to one of the houses of rest?”
The dog-man leered. Llun flushed, embarrassed. Did the dog-man really think that sort of thing appealed to an artisan? How typical. The smith working off his frustrations with a romp in the hay.
Llun struck the nail so hard it cracked in half.
