THE BONE AND THE ANVIL - The Drunkard’s Wisdom

Jarek’s shanty leaned against t

Jarek’s shanty leaned against the crumbling basalt wall of the lower canal gate like a sick dog trying to stay out of the wind.It smelled of dry rot, wet wool, and the bitter, turpentine tang of cheap beet-gin.

The roof was made of salvaged zinc sheets and tarred felt, held down by heavy river stones that rattled whenever the draft came howling up from the water-cuts.Kian shoved the sagging pine door open.

A iron kettle hung over an unlit brazier, cold and red with rust.”Who’s that?” a voice wheezed out of the gloom near the hearth.It was a wet, rattling sound, followed by a violent coughing fit that ended with a long, whistling gasp.

Jarek sat on an overturned lard-barrel, his legs wrapped in filthy grey rags that had once been military blankets.

His left eye was covered by a milky film, white as boiled lard, and his good right eye squinched against the feeble flicker of a tallow stub stuck to an iron plate.”It’s

Rhyd,” Kian said.

He pulled the door shut behind him, the latch clattering softly into its wooden keeper. “From the 27th.”Jarek squinted through the haze, his hand fumbling along the dirt floor until his knuckles brushed the neck of a green glass bottle. “Rhyd… the eastern boy.

Cormac’s rat.” He took a long, swallowing gulp from the bottle, his

Adam’s apple bobbing like a dry walnut under his loose, scarred throat skin. “What do you want?

The doctor didn’t send you with more of that black salve, did he?

Tastes like horse-manure.

Don’t do a damn thing for the lung-rot.””I came to ask about the

Tempering,” Kian said.The old man froze.

The bottle stayed pressed against his lower lip, a trickle of clear gin running down into his grey, unkempt beard.

He let out a short, mocking snort that turned into another dry cough.”The

Tempering,” Jarek spat, wiping his chin with his sleeve. “Listen to the conscript.

Wants to know how the grand officers turn their flesh into iron.

You want a fancy sword too, boy?

A silver buckle?

A horse with leather reins?””I want to know how it works,” Kian said, stepping closer.

He pulled a small, greasy paper packet from his coat pocket and laid it on the lard-barrel beside the tallow stub. “Two ounces of dried tobacco.

Cormac gave it to me for scrubbing the clinic floor.”Jarek’s good eye widened slightly.

His thin, calloused fingers darted out like a toad’s tongue, snatching the paper packet before

Kian could draw his hand back.

He brought it to his nose, taking a deep, shuddering breath of the dark, leaf-scented air.”Cormac’s a decent bastard,” Jarek muttered, his tone softening just enough to lose its sharpest edge. “A fool, but decent.”The door creaked open again.

Cormac stepped inside, ducking his head to clear the low lintel.

He carried a heavy leather medical bag under one arm and smelled strongly of carbolic soap and damp leather.

He stopped, his grey eyebrows knitting together as he looked from

Kian to the old man on the barrel.”I told you to stay in the barracks,

Kian,” Cormac said, setting his bag down on a low wooden chest. “Your rib-stitches aren’t due to come out until

Sunday.””My ribs are fine,” Kian said without looking back. “I needed to talk to

Jarek.””Talk to him about what?

How to ruin your liver before you’re twenty?” Cormac pulled a clean cloth from his bag and began wiping his hands. “He’s three-parts blind and four-parts drunk every hour the sun’s up.””He was an armorer at the

Glass-Fall,” Kian said quietly. “He saw the first

Steel-Bound company get forged.”Jarek chuckled—a dry, rasping sound that rattled in his chest. “Tell the doctor to shut his mouth, boy.

He knows how to sew up a belly when a bayonet rips it open, but he doesn’t know a damn thing about the

Crucible.”Jarek reached down, grabbed a lump of unburnt black coal from the brazier, and held it up between his thumb and forefinger.”Look at this,” Jarek said, his good eye staring right at

Kian. “What is it?””Coal,” Kian said.”It’s dirt,” Jarek corrected, tossing the lump from hand to hand. “It’s hard black dirt.

You put it in a grate, you light a match, it burns slow.

Gives off a little heat, a lot of smoke, keeps an old man’s toes from freezing off in

That’s an ordinary man’s body.

Blood, bone, gristle.

Slow.”He dropped the coal back into the brazier with a dull clack.

Then he reached into his greasy wool waistcoat and pulled out a thumb-sized glass vial filled with a coarse, greyish-blue dust that shimmered faintly in the tallow light—processed

Crux residue.”Now,” Jarek growled, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly whisper. “You take a blast-furnace.

You build the brick walls three feet thick.

You shovel in the coal, you crank the steam-bellows until the iron grate turns white, and then… then you throw a handful of this stuff right into the air-pipe.”He shook the vial.

The blue dust inside seemed to dance, tiny specs of light clinging to the glass walls.”What happens to the furnace, boy?” Jarek asked.Kian didn’t answer.

He watched the blue light reflect in the milky film over

Jarek’s blind eye.”It bursts,” Cormac said from the corner, his voice cold, flat, entirely devoid of the old man’s theatrical flair. “Nine times out of ten, the iron walls split, the boiler explodes, and the men standing nearby get bathed in molten slag.

That’s what your ‘Tempering’ is,

Kian.””It makes ’em stronger,” Jarek argued, his good eye flashing with an old, stubborn fire. “The ones who survive!

Crux doesn’t blend with your blood, boy—it burns it!

It cooks the fat out of your marrow, hardens your sinews like tempered wire, and forces your soul-forge to swell up until you can channel the

Aether through an iron blade without your arm shattering from the recoil!””And what happens after five years of channeling it?” Kian asked softly.Jarek’s mouth shut.

He looked down at the green glass bottle between his boots.He didn’t answer, but

Cormac did.”Glass-Sickness,” the doctor said, stepping forward and laying a hand on

Kian’s shoulder.

His grip was firm, heavy, and smelled of lavender vinegar. “The

Crux leaves a residue in the lungs and the liver.

First, your breath turns sweet—smells like ozone and honey.

Then your fingernails turn black.

By the time you’re thirty, your blood thickens into a black sludge that clogs your heart until it stops.”Cormac looked at the old man on the barrel. “Quell’s got it.

He thinks nobody notices the coughing fits behind the horse-barn, but

I’ve seen the spit on his handkerchiefs.

He won’t last two more winters.”Kian stood silent in the middle of the dark shanty.

Outside, the wind rattled the zinc roof sheets—clatter, clatter, clatter—a cold, mindless noise that seemed to fill the entire valley.He reached beneath his shirt, his thumb brushing against the smooth, cold enamel of the six wolf-teeth hanging against his breastbone.The

Empire built its army by throwing men into a furnace and tossing explosive coal into their veins.

It was brutal, dirty, and deadly—but it made men who could cut through stone.”How much does a shard cost?” Kian asked.Old

Jarek let out a long, wheezing laugh that ended in a spit. “A processed

Shatter-Glass shard?

One that won’t blow your heart out your ribs the second you breathe it in?” He took another long pull from his gin bottle. “More than a canal-digger sees in three lifetimes, boy.

More than a conscript makes in ten.”