City in the Sky (4 page)

Erik was silent for a long moment, and then met his grandfather's eyes. “What do I do?” he asked quietly.

“You go on,” Byron admitted. “Killing a man was never a demon I had to deal with, thanks be to the Gods, but none can deny you'd little choice in the matter. You deal with it, and go on. You've a life ahead of you, grandson, and I won't see you throw it away over the death of that sort of scum.”

Byron released his grip, and Erik slowly massaged his hand. His grandfather's words made sense, indeed, they repeated what part of his mind had been saying all along. But saying 'deal with it' and actually dealing with it were two different things.

“How?” Erik asked quietly.

“You can
start
,” Byron observed, “by not trying to work yourself into the grave. Go out and spend some money on your own enjoyment. You've little enough time to yourself as it is, without throwing away what you have.”

Erik hesitated. He'd never been inclined to spend money on entertainment, mainly because it had always been in short supply. Before he said this aloud, Byron laughed. “Grandson, between the King's reward for that Draconan bastard and the way you've overworked yourself these last weeks, you can afford to do almost anything you want to. You can easily afford a night at a tavern, relaxing. Go.”

With a tiny smile on his lips, the first he'd felt in weeks, Erik yielded to his grandfather's demand.

The Iron Hammer was the tavern Vidran's smiths tended to frequent on the occasions where any of them had the time and money to do so. Nestled onto the corner at the end of Smith's Row, the two-story brick and wood structure still bore the scars of being one of the few survivors of the fire that had burned through the Row twenty years ago, killing Erik's parents.

While on the end of Smith's Row, the Hammer was also conveniently placed on one of the major roads from the harbor to the city's main gates, and the rooms on the second floor were usually full of travelers. The smiths provided steady business, keeping the old tavern afloat, but it was the travelers that made the Hammer's profits.

The main floor of the building was one large taproom, with a large wooden bar stretched along the wall dividing the kitchen from the taproom. An even dozen wooden tables, some of which were as old as the tavern but had weathered the years far worse, were scattered around the room.

The bar was attended by old but still sturdy wooden stools, and it was one of these Erik had taken when he'd entered the tavern. A half-empty stein of ale rested on the bar in front of him as he listened to the bard in the corner.

“
Twelve swords, twelve dances,

Twelve battles of legend,

Twelve lords so dire they slew.

Twelve bearers, twelve keepers,

Twelve heroes of Cevran,

Twelve keys to the dragon-king's cage
.”

Erik snorted at the lyrics. The
Lay of the Dragon-King
was quite popular in certain circles – most schoolchildren at least knew the chorus – but only bards knew it all. It was a grand mythic epic of battles and sacrifice and gods, and no-one believed a single word of any of it.

“Wings and Sky!” four voices said quietly but together, cutting through the din of the bar. Erik turned almost involuntarily, and saw that the table nearest to him had been occupied by four men, none of whom could have been above five feet tall. Slanted eyes, arched cheekbones, and the toast they'd just spoken proclaimed them all to be Aeradi.

All four were armed, and as Erik watched, one of them pulled his sheathed sword up and tossed it onto the table in disgust. “It had clearly been building for some time,” Erik heard him say, apparently continuing an earlier conversation. “Sky steel doesn't just suddenly shear from stress.”

“You've carried that thing for twenty years,” one of the others commented. “Surely you've got enough worth out of it to replace it?”

The first speaker shrugged. “Maybe, but I won't. You all know why.”

The others nodded. “You aren't getting sky steel fixed in
Vidran
, that's for sure,” another said flatly. “Hell, I wouldn't lay money on getting it fixed anywhere other than Garria or back home.”

“We aren't hitting Garria on this run,” the man with the broken sword replied. “I asked the Captain. Just here, Hellit, Seije, and then back here to finish up before heading home.”

“Just humans?” one of them said with disgust. “They farm well and make good beer, but that's about
all
you can say for them. They sure as hell can't reforge a sky steel blade.”

Figuring that eavesdropping wasn't going to do him any more good, Erik quietly slid his stool out from the bar and crossed over to the Aeradi's table. “Excuse me gentlemen,” he said quietly, “but I'm afraid I couldn't help but overhear you talking. I believe you said you had a broken sky steel blade?”

Three of the four Aeradi looked shocked that a human had
dared
speak to them. The one with the broken sword however, simply looked at Erik. “Yes,” he replied. “Do you know of a man in Vidran who can fix it?”

“Yes,” Erik told him. “Me.”

“You can?” one of the others scoffed. “No human can crystal-forge.”

“And many Aeradi are blind,” the first speaker replied gently. He stood and offered Erik his hand. “My name is Harmon
hept
Ikeras, and unlike my companions, I know Sky Blood when I see it.”

That shut the other three up. Erik took the man's hand. “My name is Erik,” he introduced himself. “I'm the journeyman at Master Byron's smithy – anyone in here could direct you there. You'll find my rates reasonable.”

“The sword has great sentimental value to me,” Ikeras said. “I would rather wait and have it repaired perfectly than repaired imperfectly now. I mean no offence, of course,” he added belatedly.

Erik grinned thinly. Reaching inside his cloak, he drew the smallsword he'd forged for Rade and laid it on the table. Even in the dim light in the tavern, the white sheen of sky steel was visible on the sword's thin blade.

Ikeras picked up the weapon and ran his finger gently down the blade. He bent it slightly, and watched it flick back into position. “This is well-forged,” he admitted. He looked up at Erik carefully. “Not what I would expect a smith to be carrying, though.”

“It is a... sample,” Erik answered, evading the unspoken question.

The doubter took the blade and looked at it. “This is excellent work,” he said quietly. “This lad may do as good a job as some of the smiths back home.”

“I agree,” Ikeras said quietly, and turned to Erik. “Would you join us for a drink, young Erik?”

“Thank you for the offer,” Erik said softly, “but it is late, and I have work to do in the morning.”

“Very well. I will visit your smithy in the morning then,” Ikeras said, inclining his head.

Erik had barely opened the store, the next morning, when Ikeras arrived. The sun had only just risen over the horizon and the streets outside the building were completely empty, but the Aeraid seemed unbothered by the early hour, entering the smithy with a spring in his step.

“Good morning, milord Ikeras,” Erik said calmly as the man entered.

“I am not a lord,” Ikeras replied with a smile, “merely a warrior of the Realm of the Sky.” He laid the broken blade he'd shown Erik in the tavern on the counter. “So,
can
you fix this?” he asked.

Erik removed the two pieces of the sword from the sheath and laid them down. He examined the break, running his finger along the shear line. The break was clean, a sharp line across the blade, but he could feel stress lines in the sky steel surrounding the break.

“Yes,” he replied. “I'm going to have to effectively reforge the entire blade though. It's
not
going to be cheap.”

“How much?” Ikeras asked.

Erik shrugged. “Ten gold marks, half in advance. It will take a day or two for me to get to it, though. I have several contracts underway at the moment.”

“I'd pay maybe six back home,” Ikeras observed. “And I
leave
in two days.”

“I'm the only smith in this city who can do what you want,” Erik replied. “Drives the price up. If you want it in two days, it will be even more, as I'll have to delay delivery on several other jobs.”

Erik liked the Aeraid and was perfectly willing to help him, but there were limits to what he could do. Crystal-forging sky steel was neither easy nor inexpensive for him, and he did have contracts he'd already agreed to. While the delay would be within the limits of the contracts, it
was
a delay, and he could end up cutting the timeframes close if he did this first.

Ikeras sighed. “Five gold marks now, ten more on completion – i
f
it is completed by tomorrow.”

Erik nodded. “Done.” He collected the pieces of the blade. “I will have it for you by tomorrow,” he told the Aeraid. “Return then.”

“Very well. Tomorrow then,” Ikeras confirmed.

Erik only had one forge-crystal left, and he'd even used some of that one making Rade's weapons. He examined it in the light shining into the forge from the brisk autumn morning. Its inner glow had faded from the original bright hue, but it was still bright enough that he was confident it would last.

If he did it right, he probably wouldn't need any extra metal, so Erik closed the box he'd kept the sky steel bar stock and the crystal in and turned back to the forge. Like the last time he'd forged sky steel, none of the fires were burning and he was alone.

The Aeraid's sword lay, wrapped in a soft leather case, on the anvil. Beyond his examination of the break, he'd really paid no attention to the blade, but as he unwrapped it, he noted an inscription at the hilt of the blade. That would make re-tempering the blade more difficult, but he could work around it.

Picking up the crystal, Erik slowly raised both of the broken edges to a forgeable heat. As they reached a bright orange shade, he lowered the crystal and grabbed the two pieces by their cool ends. Holding them carefully in a pair of thick leather gloves, he slammed them together with a grunt.

The metal didn't weld instantly, but it fit together nicely and he picked up his hammer to finish the job. A minute or so later, the two pieces of the blade had been re-forged into a single blade.

With the pieces joined, Erik still needed to re-temper the blade to prevent it breaking again. The inscription etched into the blade just above the tang would make that difficult, and he examined it to see how he could work around it.

He only barely glanced at the actual text, but what he saw draw his eyes straight back to it. He could have sworn he'd seen the name 'Tarverro' – which was impossible.

But it obviously
wasn't
impossible, for on the tang of the blade, clear as day, was the inscription: “Karn
septi
Tarverro. 2-3-Fire-3-Dorbani. 968 YR.”
Karn
Tarverro?

Erik's first thought was that it had to be another Karn Tarverro. But it made sense. He knew his father had been a wing-lancer before he'd married his mother. That had been twenty-two years ago, and six years sounded about right for his father's time in the Wings.

But if this
had
been Karn Tarverro's sword – Erik's
father's
sword – who was the Aeraid who'd carried it? How had it ended up in the hands of Harmon
hept
Ikeras? And just what did it mean to the man who'd never met his father?

Erik took a deep breath. They were good questions – questions he'd need answers to. However, the only person that could answer them was Harmon
hept
Ikeras, and the best way to be sure that the Aeraid did answer them was to finish fixing the sword.

With another deep breath, he picked up the hammer and the crystal again.

Erik sat on the edge of the counter in the smithy's shop, waiting for Ikeras to arrive. The sun had only just begun to light the street outside and leak under the door to light the dim room. The repaired sky steel blade lay sheathed across his thighs, both visible and easily reached.

The combination smithy, shop and house was silent. At this hour in the morning, very few, if any, others would be awake. Only Erik took in the slowly rising sun, his fingers tracing the inscription on the blade in its dim light.

Footsteps on the cobblestones were audible for a while in the morning silence before the door opened and Ikeras entered. The Aeraid paused in the doorway, blinking against the dark, and then saw Erik.

“You are finished?” he asked.

“Indeed,” Erik replied. He slid off the counter and crossed to the Aeraid. “I managed to avoid damaging the inscription when I re-tempered it, as well,” he continued.