took care of her.
The sweetmeats gone, Dubro returned to the fire, lifting up a barrel hoop he had
left there to heat. Illyra watched with never-sated interest as he laid it on
the anvil to pound it back into a true circle for Jofan, the wine-seller. The
mallet fell, but instead of the clear, ringing sound of metal on metal, there
was a hollow clang. The horn of the anvil fell into the dirt.
Even Haakon was wide-eyed with silent surprise. Dubro’s anvil had been in the
bazaar since … since Dubro’s grandfather for certain, and perhaps longer – no
one could remember before that. The smith’s face darkened to the colour of the
cooling iron. Illyra placed her hands over his.
‘We’ll get it fixed. We’ll take it up to the Court of Anns this afternoon. I’ll
borrow Moonflower’s ass-and-cart …’
‘No!’ Dubro exploded with one tortured word, shook loose her hands, and stared
at the broken piece of his livelihood.
‘Can’t fix an anvil that’s broken like that one,’ Haakon explained softly to
her. ‘It’ll only be as strong as the seam.’
‘Then we’ll get a new one,’ she responded, mindful of Dubro’s bleak face and her
own certain knowledge that no one else in the bazaar possessed an anvil to sell.
‘There hasn’t been a new anvil in Sanctuary since before Ranke closed down the
sea-trade with Ilsig. You’d need four camels and a year to get a mountain-cast
anvil like that one into the bazaar – if you had the gold.’
A single tear smeared through the kohl. She and Dubro were well off by the
standards of the bazaar. They had ample copper coins for Haakon’s sweetmeats and