NOTE: This is a flashback from Akaris’s point of view (the pov character from chapter 1).
"Akaris," Rusil said. His dark auburn hair was pulled back into its characteristic long tail, and there were dark circles pitted under his eyes, souring his pale skin. "You've got to eat something," he said. "I'll make you anything you want."
She put her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. He'd already given her a number of things that she could eat, even put some of them in front of her. But she didn't have much of an appetite, and she didn't care if she did or didn't eat. It was hard to care about much of anything.
Rusil slid into a chair next to her, and she looked at him, her gray eyes meeting his brown. His face wasn't frustrated or angry, but full of understanding. "It's not going to do them any good if you starve yourself, is it? I know it's hard, but you have to eat," he continued, his voice gentle. "You don't have to eat much if you don't want to, but it has to be something. You've got to be hungry. You never eat much of anything."
She swallowed but didn't respond. Her stomach did feel empty, but she'd eaten so little over the past two months that the feeling wasn't unfamiliar to her.
"You don't have to talk," he said. "But I do need you to eat." He paused and looked at her for a searching moment, probably looking for some sort of response.
But Akaris didn't respond; she hadn't spoken any words aloud for over two months.
"I have eggs I bought from Tremmen," he continued. "Everyone likes eggs. You like eggs, don't you? Will you eat the eggs if I fix them for you?"
She hesitated, and then nodded into her knees.
About an hour later, they left Rusil's small cottage and walked towards the main avenue of Easthaven towards his shop, only about a hundred strides away from his home.
She trailed behind him. She hadn't left his cottage since the day of the funeral, and as far as she knew, this was the first day that Rusil had returned for a full day of work though he had worked nights on occasion. He and her father had opened the same shop together, and as a bladesmith, they took on their own customers. Rusil could take time off if he needed to.
She resisted the urge to cling to Rusil's arm. The shop directly in front of them still showed the nearness of the mountains that bordered Easthaven, but behind them and the cottage, there was nothing but grass for ages. That emptiness made her feel uncomfortable.
Rusil spoke to her as they walked, but as usual she didn't answer. He seemed to like to do that. He would always talk to her, sometimes he would even pause, pretend she'd responded, and afterwards continue. Akaris didn't mind. She liked it, as long as she didn't have to respond back.
They entered his shop through its back door to enter the smith's supply room. It held a large table where ledgers, a lock box, and a clamp made specifically for xirins sat. The xirins were the rooms main attraction; at least fifty hung from racks on the wall in various stages of completion.
The furnace was located in another, adjacent room, but its flames had permanently seared the scent of woodsmoke throughout the shop. The familiar smell filled her nostrils, comforting her, but she still stood uncertainly at the doorway, unsure of where to go. Noticing her absence, Rusil turned and subsequently beckoned for her to come to the desk. She walked to him, timid.
Rusil reached into his satchel that had been hanging at his side and produced a leather-bound book. "I brought a book for you. We can get more from the library at the Hall in Caelan in a few months, but we'll only be here a few hours." He slid it over to her. "It won't be too long, I promise. You can sit there."
Akaris sat and took the book.
As she opened it, he walked over to the wall and took a xirin off of the wall that was halfway complete with inked designs running down its sides, just as many of the others on the wall. The small wooden clamp rested in front of his seat, and he adjusted its teeth until it held the sword firmly.
He glanced up to notice her staring, and Akaris quickly looked down at the book he had given her. It was one Akaris didn't recognize, but it was on the history of western and southern Kassaliss in sweeping Vandrin script. Vandrin lent itself well to writing quickly, but the scribe seemed to have gotten carried away in writing too fast and the words were written at angles that made it hard to decipher exactly what the word was or wasn't. She paged through it anyways, and on top of the messy handwriting, some of the words were too advanced for her, making it difficult to read.
But as time passed, she found herself growing less and less interested in the book, and more and more interested on the xirin Rusil was working on across the table. As he worked, she saw the imprint of designs work themselves across the xirin's length. His brows were furrowed in careful concentration, and he had attached another pair of small lenses to his spectacles that she assumed helped him see what he was doing more clearly. He moved slowly and methodically, and rarely taking a break from his work. Akaris completely lost interest in the book and only watched him and the beautiful blade that glinted a faint, shining silver in the room's light.
Rusil looked at her over his spectacles and put down the small tool he had been using to etch designs into the swords. Akaris quickly glanced down at her book. She couldn't much afford to be a nuisance. Without Rusil, she'd be not only an orphan, but a homeless orphan. She wasn't sure what she'd do if that happened.
"Here," Rusil said, breaking through those worries. "Do you want to watch? I'll move your chair for you so you can see."
She paused, surprised, but she nodded in affirmation. He smiled and moved the chair to the other side of the table so that she was sitting next to him.
From this position, she could see the xirin's designs. The sword was clamped in place at an angle, creating an open plane for Rusil to work on. He pointed at a small engraving upon the steel of the xirin. "I start by engraving the piece. If I want to inlay it with syrana powder, it has to be a deeper indentation, so you have room to emboss the design once you're done." He looked at her. "You're familiar with syrana powder?"
Akaris hesitated and then shook her head. She had heard the term before, and she knew that syrana powder could be taken from plants and that it glowed but didn't know anything about how it could be applied.
He shifted his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. "It glows at night, or in dark places. You can dye it to whatever color you like, and it doesn't expire like sentia does." He glanced at her and when he saw she was still listening, he continued, "I bought it from Caelan a few months ago. You have to be careful on how you store it, or it might start taking on the color of whatever you store it in." He nodded to a barrel in the corner of the room. "That's where I keep it. I have a sheer cloth hanging like a bag from the top so that it's thick enough to keep the powder from touching the wood, so it won't change color. That was your father's idea."
He froze at the mention of Alek as if he had made a blunder, but Akaris only felt numb, disassociated from what her life had once been. She nodded to acknowledge him, and he visibly relaxed.
She couldn't take her eyes of the sword. It had a long, curved edge with a graceful hilt and a horizontal cross guard, the blade's length stretching three feet along the table, curved, beautiful, and deadly. Rusil carried two on his belt with him wherever he went, and her father had too. He had died with both of them in his hands. She closed her eyes and tried to banish the memory of her mother laying on the ground, blood seeping into the wooden floor. Then the memories of both of their funerals, the whispers that it must have been her father who had killed both himself and his wife, all falsehoods that she had never defended against. Falsehoods that she had never defended against because that would mean explaining what really had happened, events of which were burned into her mind by repetitive nightmares. She flexed her hands in and out of fists, unsuccessfully trying to banish the sudden assault of memories that were as vivid as the day she'd first seen them.
"Kari, are you all right?" Rusil's voice brought her back to the present.
She jolted in place and turned to him.
"Do you want to see one already done?" he asked, in a way that suggested he had already asked at least once before. Akaris glanced to him, and he took the look as confirmation. He walked to the back of the room where a few hung on racks mounted to the wall, took out a step stool, and retrieved one, taking it by its hilt.
"What I did just now was engraving. The xirin I was just working on will eventually look like this when I'm done with it," Rusil said as he set down the long, curved blade dulled by a thin wooden guard over its edge on the table. "Cup your hand over it. It's dulled by the wood, so it won't hurt you." Akaris leaned forward and cupped her hand over it. Against the darkness created by her hand, green light shone across the small design created by Rusil's embossed vines to create a swirling pattern of luminescent vines. "It'll glow in dark places. It's doesn't have any practical purpose and it's not cost-effective, but it's certainly nice to look at, isn't it?"
Akaris nodded again and let her cupped hand travel all down the sword's length. The syrana powder stayed light for a few moments after it had been exposed to the darkness, and when she took her hand away, the whole blade a backlit green against the ink that traced the carvings into vines. Akaris sat back in her chair, and let her eyes travel across the blade's length, her gaze going back over it over and over again until the forest-green light of the syrana lacquer faded away.
While she'd seen xirins before, even up close, they'd always been a background piece. Now, this beautiful blade that was as much a work of art as any painting was in the foreground. It was one of the most marvelous things she'd ever seen. She wanted to put her hand back over the sword and see the effect again, but she didn't want to be a nuisance. He had already taken the time to get the sword down just for her, stopping his work. Akaris let her gaze linger anyways. It reminded her of her father's xirins, which had been engraved with scaling lunar designs of Phim and Evon in various stages of wax and wane, embedded with white syrana powder. They had been buried with him.
They probably glowed now, she realized.
"That was very attentive of you," Rusil said. Akaris could tell he was beaming from the tone of his voice, though her back was to him. "Most people don't realize it'll glow for a few moments after it's exposed to the darkness."
Akaris nodded in assent, and he stood for another moment with his hands on his hips. He took it away a moment later, and then went back to work, sitting down next to her, and picking up his engraving tools to start again. He worked for about two more hours, engraving designs of intricate florals along the blade's length. He rarely stopped, only ever pausing from his motions to adjust his spectacles farther up his nose before he continued again as Akaris watched. It was transfixing to see the indentations slowly begin to take shape into distinguishable designs across the steel canvas, and she studied his designs with rapture.
Rusil seemed pleased that she was watching, a small smile rarely leaving his face as he continued to engrave the sword. They stayed a long time, much longer than a few hours, and it was well past midday when he finally stopped.
"Ready to go?" he asked. He placed his tool down and rolled his shoulders back and forth to work out the kinks the settled into them. Then, he stood and reached for his satchel that hung off of his chair. "I hope that wasn't too boring for you." He nodded at her book. "I'll try to find some others for you when we go to Caelan; maybe I can find some that are more interesting. I have some of my own, but they're on either engraving and swordplay."
"Can I have the book about the xirins?" she asked. Her voice had come out as a shy whisper from two months of no speaking. She cleared her throat and spoke again, louder. "Can I have the book about the xirins? And maybe—maybe you show me how to use one?"
She looked away from the sword and at Rusil. His mouth had fallen slightly agape and his hand was still reaching for his satchel. For a moment, Akaris thought that he might not have heard her, but then he nodded and then nodded a few more times. "I can do that. Absolutely."
Akaris cleared her throat again and turned back to the sword. "Thank you," she whispered.
"I can finish the other side tomorrow, and the day after that we can start," he said.
Akaris nodded.
He took off the added lens that he had attached to his spectacles and rolled his shoulders again. Then, he looked over to her. "Are you hungry?"
"Yes," she replied quietly. "I'm hungry."
"I'm hungry too," he said. Rusil grinned, and Akaris wondered why he'd be so happy about her wanting something to eat.
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