CLANG.

CLANG … “Again.”

CLANG …. “Careful! Even it out now….”

CLANG …. “That’s done it! Once more!”

CLANG. “Excellent, boy! Now for the quenching.”

*SPLOOSH*Fhisssssssssssss.

“Good, boy, good! Ha! ‘Glass may glint, but iron binds’! Another!”

Master Brimmel spiked another gob of molten iron over the anvil’s horn. Its ruddy glow lit the dark shop, sparking twin embers in Beidon’s eyes as they devoured the metal. Its incandescence filled his vision, consumed his awareness. There was nothing else. Just the iron…. his trade, his future, his bright lodestar blazing in the dark. He flipped a sodden shag of hair out of his eyes, then hefted his hammer. His Master took position with the tongs. Beidon visualized the horseshoe-to-be within the shapeless blob. He was ready.

Inhale. Heft. Take aim. Exhale and… SWING. CLANG. Sparks flew, comets through the dark. Again. The metal spread, bent. Again, the distinctive shape of the ‘shoe beginning to emerge. Again. The hammer an effortless extension of his own arm. Soon he’d do this alone. Soon after he’d move on to higher levels of the craft: hammerheads. Axes. Pikes.

And after that… (barely daring dream it)… after that, he would rise above Master Brimmel’s stifling subordnation to the demands of the glassocracy. Nevermind Brimmel’s insistence that facilitating the glassworkers’ intricate craft was the highest expression of a Clear Crucible ironmonger’s own trade (never his art!) Nevermind blowpipes, shears, kiln-grates, mashers and rollers and all the other dreary tools of their trade.

Someday Beidon would craft intricacies all his own. He’d make gears. Cogs. Mechanisms.

CLANG. He’d be a Master in his own right… worthy, exalted. He’d give himself to the iron and the fire and the hammer. Nothing else mattered, no one else-

Beidon started back as if icewater had been flung into his face.

There’d come a sound from the street. A groan? A titter? Some quicksilver combination, surely, of both, spritely and deft enough to slip between the closed window-slats, dance over the forge-roar and metal-creak, and plunge straight into the forge-boy’s ear.

The hammer abruptly felt inert and alien, heavy in Beidon’s hand. He gave it a desultory swing even as his eyes sought to bore through the shutters-

CRACK.

-in lieu of the clarion tone the hammer this time evoked a discordant clash. Beidon barely noticed as the forge-tongs snapped, the wooden handle kicking up to strike Brimmel square on his bulgy nose. The unfinished horseshoe flew from the anvil, ricocheted crazily off the far wall, and plashed into the quenching trough where it immediately shattered. Beidon hardly noticed.

“….BOY!! What in fodder-all was that?? BOY—” but Beidon was suddenly, utterly elsewhere. Away and racing in fact, bolting to the window and yanking it open (before abashedly swinging it back until just a narrow crack remained for him to peer through.) Iron was a peerless substance, by his lights worthier even than glass, but the sovereign thought of it had been bellows-pump blown out of his brain. In its place shone gold, brightest gold… it glinted in Beidon’s eyes as he watched it bob and bounce down Parison Way, outshining the prismatic twinkle of the street’s glass accents and fixtures. The quicksilver chatter danced back from it, lingering well after the gold had been swallowed up amidst the village foot traffic. Beidon stared after, entranced. He didn’t move even when Brimmel’s meaty hand clapped down onto his shoulder. The smith spun Beidon to face him, yet the boy’s head remained trained on the window.

“BEIDON! What in rust has gotten into you, boy?”

“Emlie...” He sighed.

The smith’s grip remained firm. “Beidon…” His voice, however, softened incongruously. “This dalliance has to end, boy. It’s time. You’re not children anymore. Nothing but grief will come of this, you mark me…”

And now Beidon did turn to face him. The forge-boy looked anything but commanding, a squat, sturdy, incongruously heavily muscled lad in scorched woolens and leather apron. Every inch a laborer, not a high society suitor. Yet he peered at Brimmel through his sweat-sodden thatch with eyes that brooked no argument. There was no iron or gold filling them now; they shined with their own determined inner light.

“You’re wrong, Master. And you’ll see….”

Next Chapter: 3. Beidon Comes Through