can’t crush it or hammer it, and no one has ever successfully woken a bone metal spirit. After a few years of frenzied study, most Shapers wrote bone metal off as an interesting but useless substance. What good is a material that can’t be turned into anything?”
“Fascinating history lesson,” Eli said. “But when does Fenzetti come in?”
“I was getting to that,” Slorn said crossly. “Of all the Shapers, Fenzetti was the only one who ever figured out how to work bone metal. Over a twenty-year span, he made a series of unbreakable swords from the material. Still, even the great Fenzetti could do only crude work with bone metal, and I’ve heard that even the few pieces he considered his masterworks aren’t much to look at. But then”—Slorn grinned—“I’m not exactly looking to hang one on my wall. I want the metal.”
“Well, in that case,” Eli said, “why not just buy bone metal? Why go through the trouble of stealing a Fenzetti?”
“Because bone metal is so rare in nature it might as well not exist,” Slorn said, annoyed. “What bone metal there is, the Shapers keep in their storehouses under their mountain. As I think should be abundantly clear by this point, they’re not just going to sell the stuff to me, and I don’t think you want to try robbing the Shaper mountain again.”
“No,” Eli said, laughing. “Once was enough for me, thanks. I guess Fenzetti blades it is. Do you want any one in particular?”
“A large one would be preferable,” Slorn said thoughtfully. “But I don’t have a particular blade in mind. Whatever you can get quickly will be fine.”
“Quickly may be relative,” Eli said. “But a deal is a deal, and you certainly did come through on your end.”
“Are we settled then?” Slorn said.
“Yes.” Eli grinned and stuck out his hand. “One coat for one bone metal blade, even trade.”
Slorn shook his hand firmly and then shuffled them out of his workroom, Nico still happily swirling her coat. As they filed out into the main room, they found Pele there waiting for them. Her face was pale and anxious, and her hair was windswept and wild, as if she’d been standing in a gale, though the trees outside were perfectly still.
“Slorn,” she said quietly. “The weather’s changing.”
Eli gave her an odd look. Weather talk wasn’t usually something Pele mentioned with that kind of gravity. Slorn, however, stopped midstep and pricked up his round ears, listening.
“You’re right,” he said, at once as serious as she was. “The pressure is changing.” He looked to Eli. “You’ve got the coat, so you’d best be leaving now. The weather changes quickly here. We need to move the house.”
“If you say so.” Eli felt uncomfortably like he had just missed something very important. “Wasn’t like we had much left to do, anyway.”
It took them about five minutes to get everything assembled. The kitchen packed them a bag of sandwiches and fruit that Eli took with such effusive thanks, the counters were nearly quivering with happiness. Josef, meanwhile, packed up his knives suspiciously, keeping his eyes on Slorn and Pele as they went around closing cabinets and shuttering windows. Eli didn’t blame him. It was hard to feel the urgency for a storm when the sky was blue and bright.
But as they trundled down the stairs and out onto the dry stream bed, Eli began to feel it too. The pressure was falling, making his ears ache, and though the air was still and calm, he could smell rain. High overhead, the clouds were moving quickly.
Slorn and Pele saw them to the edge of the woods, but the moment Eli, Nico, and Josef stepped into the shade of the trees, their hosts turned and went back inside the house without looking back, as though they were deliberately trying not to see which way their guests left.
When the door shut behind them, the house shuddered. There was an enormous creak of bending wood, and the house’s foundations began to move. The four spindly legs straightened and stretched their chicken-feet talons, leaning forward, then backward, so that the house rocked like a ship at sea, and Eli felt sure he was going to be sick just watching. Then, when all the legs were stretched, the house shuddered and took a step forward. The wooden limbs rippled like muscle, and the house was off, walking in long strides down the dry streambed and disappearing into the woods with surprising speed, leaving only a thin line of