Page 2 of The Fire Apprentice (Sylvania #5)

A thin breeze swept through the back of the smithy as Jane stepped out the door. Thick wooden posts held up a roof over the work area, and its stone floor was covered but the sides were open to the fields surrounding Woods Rest.

Four small chimneys were lined up in a row, each with a flat table in front of the hearth opening. The tables were at hip height and each contained a firepot, the depression where the coal fire sat. Long-handled iron tools hung from the side of each table, and each had an anvil beside it. Along the wall was a workbench with hammers and tongs of various shapes and sizes scattered across it. Forged iron leaves and flowers lay on the windowsills, thick with dust. Some day she was simply going to bring her own dustcloth and wipe them all.

Only one chimney had a pile of coal glowing in the pot, the one where Ro stood with his back to her. He used an iron poker to drag more coal onto the pile. He wore trousers and a dark shirt, and his hair was short above his neck and longer on top. It ruffled in a wisp of wind blowing through from the meadows outside the shop.

Ro called out to Benny. The awkward teen sat behind the chimney at the far end of the giant bellows that supplied air up through the bottom of the pot.

Benny lowered the pamphlet he was reading and reached up for the handle of the bellows. With one arm, he tugged it down, then up, as the bellows wheezed with air. He kept working the bellows as he returned his attention to his reading.

Jane stepped closer. Ro’s head turned, his eyes sweeping over her feet before returning to the coals. “Fire’s almost ready,” he said. He even sounded a bit like the tinsmith. His voice was deep and quiet.

Jane fiddled with her bracelet, twisting her finger into the material, and forced her breathing to stay steady. She had no reason to be this nervous.

Ro glanced over his shoulder and when he saw her, he put down the poker and turned.

He didn’t smile. But he didn’t scowl, either. He gave no hint what he was thinking—no haughty look in his eyes, no interest, nothing. A leather apron covered his clothing. He had a strong jawline and his hair hung in his eyes until he reached up and pushed it behind his ear with a large, callused hand.

Skies, he had large hands. He probably knew what to do with them.

Drat. Maryanne was right. Jane did have a thing for capable hands.

“Can I help you?” he asked quietly when ten heartbeats had passed in awkward silence. She swore the rumbles of his low voice vibrated in her toes through the stone floor.

“I’m hooks,” Jane blurted out.

Ro waited. He didn’t laugh or scrunch up his brow in confusion.

Jane focused. “I need hooks.”

He nodded once.

“For the door. For the coats and scarves.”

“How many?”

How many did Maryanne want? They had five children in the house if you didn’t count the baby. “Five?”

Ro nodded again and turned to the fire. “It’ll be a few minutes if you’d like to come back.”

Jane edged around an anvil toward the next chimney down as Ro took an iron rod from a bucket of them and thrust the end into the coals. The fire glowed where the air from the bellows blew through and greenish smoke curled off the pile of coal and whisked up the chimney. Ro glanced over as she came up alongside where he worked.

“I like to watch,” she said.

He regarded her another half-beat, blinked, and turned to adjust the rod in the fire.

Skies, she sounded like a lecher. “I like being at the smithy,” she explained. “I like watching the blank iron rods turn into useful things.”

“You should apprentice.”

Jane tried to laugh off the suggestion but a lump swelled in her throat and she ended up coughing. “No one would want me.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“My arms aren’t strong enough for blacksmithing.”

“It doesn’t take much strength if you know how to hold the hammer.”

Her face heated again. But he hadn’t said it the way Maryanne would have, suggestively, and he probably didn’t mean it to sound lewd. Thankfully he didn’t look up. He pulled the rod from the fire and Jane stepped back. The rod came out glowing white and crackling with sparks and she gasped. She’d never seen one do that before.

Ro looked over.

“It’s pretty.” Her face heated at how stupid she must sound and she took another step back.

Ro laid the white-hot tip of the rod on the anvil as the sparks abated. He reached for the nearest hammer and stepped up close to the metal. Already the glow had faded to yellow. His arm with the hammer came up and dropped.

Clang!

Jane winced even though she’d been expecting the noise and the spray of sparks. Ro darted one look at her, as if to check that the sparks hadn’t reached where she stood, and hammered in earnest, flattening the end of the rod.

He didn’t hammer at it the way she’d seen other blacksmiths do it. Usually they swung the hammer in a wide arc to crash down on the iron as if they were beating a dangerous viper to death. And usually they used the biggest hammer in the shop. Ro held a medium-sized one. He stood close to the anvil and his motion was a softer up and down, but when the hammer came down it struck with force.

Talking was impossible with the noise of the clashing metal. But even when Ro called out to Benny to resume pumping the bellows and paused his hammering to reheat the orange rod, words failed her. This time when he withdrew the rod from the coals, a shower of sparks cascaded off it.

Jane squinted at the bright metal and resisted reaching out a hand as if he held out a flower to her. “What makes it do that?” she asked.

“It, um, it might be the batch of iron.” He held it steady before her.

“Ro!”

They both startled.

Master Smith stood in the nearest window. “That’s too much heat, lad. You’ll weaken the metal. You want it glowing white, not burnin’ up.”

Ro placed it on the anvil. “Yes, sir.”

His cheeks darkened red and he focused on his task. He shouldn’t be embarrassed for his mistake. Apprenticing was all about learning. Maybe he was embarrassed she’d witnessed it. She could reassure him but speaking about it seemed likely to embarrass him further.

Jane watched how he angled his hammer at the edge of the anvil, curling the flat end of the rod into what would become the lip of the hook as the yellow heat faded to orange. Her gaze drifted to Ro’s hand gripping the hammer. She’d never seen such callused hands—the marks were more like scars, as if he’d been burned by a piece of hot iron. Her gaze moved up his arm. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows, and each time the hammer lifted, the long muscle in his forearm hardened. She tried instead to watch how he lifted the hammer and let it fall, using the downward pull of the earth to build the force of the blow. He made it look so effortless. Could she do it?

He flipped the rod over, tapping the hammer lightly on the curled part to flatten the outside of the lip, and her mind leapt to a scene of those hands on her body, flipping her over...

She shook the image away. Daydreaming about tumbling a man while he was in front of you was a sure way to become awkward and ruin a conversation. And it wasn’t like she could rush into the physical part of a relationship, much as she wanted to. She’d rushed into sex with Hervey, the only man she’d been with since Larch, and her old pain had been waiting and worse than she remembered it from her younger days. She had to remember to take it more slowly. Maybe if she did, she could relax and the pain would go away.

Ro turned to the fire again, rod in hand. He took up the long-handled poker with his other hand and drove its hook down into the pile of coal, collapsing the heap. He used the hook to drag more coal from the back onto the pile in the pot before thrusting the rod into the glowing center, then through it. This time when he withdrew the rod, it glowed with a broad stretch of white without any sparks. As if he knew exactly how long to leave it in the coals to heat properly. Jane bit her lip but he ignored her.

He positioned the glowing section atop a chisel-like edge mounted upright on the workbench and gave it one heavy strike, nearly separating it. He released the hammer and took up tongs to hold the curled end of the rod and wrested the rod in two.

Jane watched enthralled as he used the tongs to hold the cut piece of iron in the fire. He heated the new end he had created, hammered it to a point, and flattened it into a delicately curved tip. That would be the end she nailed to the door, once it had a hole in it.

Again Rowan withdrew the iron from the fire, this time glowing at the hook end. He dipped the curled tip into the water barrel with a hiss. It came out gray.

“Why did you do that?”

“That part of the hook’s finished. If I quench it I won’t risk hurting it.”

He positioned the hot iron over the horn of the anvil and hammered in earnest, curving the main section of the rod into a rounded hook. He stopped to examine it lengthwise, hammered it sideways on the top of the anvil to flatten it, and continued making the curve.

Jane tried to focus on the work and not his body. When that failed she studied all the tools on the workbench and scanned outside beyond the wooden posts supporting the roof, out at the spring wheat waving gently in the field. Ro had to heat the metal once more before the hook was done.

After checking the final shape, he pinned the flat top end of the hook to the anvil with a pointed chisel, held it in place as he switched tools, and struck an extra-hard hammer blow on the chisel, punching a hole in the top of the hook. He switched back to the tongs and grasped the finished hook.

He plunged the finished hook into the barrel of water. Steam hissed out and drifted away.

Jane fanned her face with her hand. “Why are you an apprentice?” she asked. “You seem to know the craft well.”

“I know only the basics.” Ro withdrew the finished hook and dropped it on the workbench along with the tongs. He called to Benny and drove the blank iron rod into the fire to begin the second hook.

Jane leaned back on the cold table behind her to watch him work. She could watch all day. She should have asked for a dozen hooks. She tried to keep her lustful thoughts contained, but each time he began to shape a new hook, she felt her body being molded and shaped in his hands. Each clang of the hammer on iron vibrated through the stones of the floor and up her legs. And when he thrust the finished hook into the steaming water to quench the heat, she imagined a similar release of the tension building in her, what she would feel like with it singing through her body and shuddering free.

Three hooks lay finished on the workbench. He reached for a new iron rod and glanced her way.

His brown eyes seemed to see her for the first time, catching on her face and staring without glancing quickly away. Her breath caught and she stared back. Maybe he could sense her longing across the few paces between them, or maybe the physical labor had stirred his blood, but somehow, he was interested in her now. She felt it in the air. She was sure of it.

Ro broke his gaze away first. He lay the hot iron across the anvil. His first blow glanced off the side, showering sparks across the floor. His fist tightened on the hammer and he brought it up sideways with his arm bulging and down again, striking a harder blow than the steady smacks he had been delivering. Was that how he handled a woman? Hard like the hammer blows, or gentle with his rough, worn hands?

Or both?

Jane pressed her palms against her thighs, holding herself together. Knowing he shared her desire made it worse, harder to resist. The fourth hook clattered to the floor after he punched the hole in it. He left it there, forgetting to quench it and instead heating the rod for the fifth. He pulled the rod out, sending a shower of sparks to the floor, and bashed it twice with the hammer to put out the sparks.

He paused, panting, and Jane stepped forward.

Ro turned to her and now he was scowling, with dark heat smoldering in his eyes half hidden by his long hair. His lips parted.

She tilted her head out at the fields. “Walk with me?”

He stared. And suddenly he looked more like a deer that scents the hunter and thinks it’s hiding by being motionless, even as the hunter pulls back the arrow to slay it. He didn’t answer, just stared.

She’d been wrong, completely wrong. Again.

Tears stung her eyes as she stumbled away. She yanked open the door and fled into the shop. In the dark interior, she slowed her steps, forcing herself to a measured pace to avoid alarming Master Smith as she called out thanks. A few more steps and she reached the front door and escaped into the lane.

The bright sunshine of noontime mixed with her tears and blinded her. She stopped to catch her breath, blinking and wiping her eyes. She was so stupid. The new apprentice wasn’t interested in her. She had wanted to find out, and she had her answer.

A shadow flitted across her face and she opened her eyes and peered upward.

The strangest bird was in the sky, high, high up but large enough that she could see the sunlight shining through its greenish wings. It had wings like a bat and a body like a fat snake. It circled over the village, coasting with its wings spread. Someone shouted from the square. The bird circled lower, growing even larger.

Its neck was too long for a bird. What in the skies was it?

“It’s a dragon,” Ro whispered behind her.