Silas Crowe worked like someone trying to remember how the world held together. The hammer rose and fell with a patient thud that set dust motes spinning in the dim shop air; sparks flew in lazy, obedient arcs and popped like distant, surprised insects. He was shaping an axle hub, taking an old, bent rumble of iron and coaxing it until the wheel it would stitch back together might bear a season or two of hard fields. The peat smoke in his throat was a taste he had learned to ignore; outside the open door the fen exhaled a long, low mist that made the sycamores look like watercolor ghosts. Birds, the squat kind that bobbed along the marsh reed, trilled in no hurry.
The iron under his hammer glowed like a stubborn little sun. Silas tilted the bloom in the tongs, looked it over by the glow, and tapped it with the flat. When it rang true his fingers remembered the whole geometry—where to draw a lip, when to cut a scarf, how the grain of iron took to a half-moon cut. His motions were efficient, economical; he moved through each step as if cataloging the proper insult for a man who had wasted his time. There was a rhythm to it that had nothing to do with noise: bellows compressed, the stoke roared, a foot shoved a wedge. A goat wandered into the yard and, as if auditioning for a trick, snatched a cooling shoe from the anvil and trotted off proud as any thief. The absurdity made Silas snort. He gave the goat a look that asked for dignity back, then returned to his iron.
Rafe came in with the sort of breathless respect only young hands could afford older men. He moved like a boy who had swallowed a map to the world whole and still had room for questions. "That hub'll hold," he said, watching the axle take shape. "You'll make it sing." Silas grunted. "I don't make music, lad. I make things that don't fall apart when you cross a hill. Keep your songs for barflies and fiddlers." Rafe laughed, not offended—he'd spent a year flinching at Silas's rough edges and liking the man for them. He set a pail of water by the forge without asking and, hands dark with soot, offered a grin that showed eagerness more than talent. "You want to see the fen?" he asked. "There's a shine out past the old peat bank today—looked like iron in the mud." Silas only tightened his grip on the tongs. He had his spots in the fen that the marsh kept to itself and he kept to himself in return. Secrets, it had turned out, were easier than trust.