do you feel about her? Separate from me and her father?”
“How can they be separate? She is Olet Kanek, daughter of Winthir—”
“Forget who her father is and who your father is and just think about her for a moment. What do you think of her?”
Jerin sighed. “Her eyes possess a keen wit, and she carries herself like a well-trained fighter. That’s about all I know. She has not spoken to me beyond the most formal, distant responses. And I will not force my attentions on her when they’re not wanted—even if that’s conversation.”
“I think perhaps I see.” Sefir and I watched five of our children jump into the lava boil at Olenik, and only our youngest, our last hope to continue the Mogen line, climbed back out lavaborn. And we raised Jerin to believe that by forging his future as a Hearthfire he would forge a better future for many people. Winthir no doubt did the same with Olet. Little wonder that they chafed at these circumstances, in which they were unable to shape matters as they wished. “Your best hope is a slow kindling based on respect, which may, in time, flare into something more. Perhaps if you speak to her frankly, as you are doing now, you can acknowledge the awkwardness and control it because you name it. She may yet prove to be a blessing. But if it doesn’t work out and she is of the same mind, you may have my permission, at least, to be free of the commitment. Winthir Kanek may take insult from it, and we may fall to fighting, and should that happen I honestly do not know which of us will emerge the victor, but we can let that hammer fall when and where it will. You have jumped into fire for your mother and me. We would not condemn you to a life of unhappiness.”
The sounds of sawing flesh stopped, and I turned to look at Jerin, who had cocked his head, unsure if he’d heard correctly. Black-bearded and blue-eyed like me, he was already strong and still packing on muscle. Shorter than me by the width of a finger. Kinder than me by the width of an ocean yet still able to fight and sail well. His crew regularly stole from Winthir Kanek’s timber pirates based in Tharsif—or at least they used to. They’d have to stop that now, but at least there was no need for it anymore.
“That’s…unexpected. And appreciated.”
“It’s also deserved, son. I couldn’t ask for a finer boy.”
We bent to our work in silence for a while, savoring a moment of accord.
“The hammer’s going to fall here soon enough, Father. The Nentians, and I imagine even the Fornish, will object to us being here. Do you know if we can win that fight?”
“I have no doubt of it. It’s a fight the Mogens have been planning for a long time.”
“But you made it sound earlier like the Nentians will welcome us.”
“Yes. They will prove me wrong, and we’ll go to war. But the rest of what I said was absolutely true. There is not a place in Hathrir so fine as this. Should we try to start a new city in Hathrir, it would be under the cloud of Thayil’s ash, and should I decide to challenge another Hearthfire, I would win nothing better than what we have here. This will be a splendid city because we’ll make it so.”
Satisfied and packing the dressed kills on the hounds, we took our time returning, and I admired all the timber as we descended. My timber. It was a day of hope and fine promises, one of the best in memory.
Volund somehow snatched three Raelech stonecutters away from Hashan Khek and played it perfectly. They arrived at dawn the next day, we told them they were in Hathrir, and they were gullible enough to believe us. Landlocked as they were and wedded to the earth, they had no knowledge of the sea and took our word for it. They probably could not conceive that we would have stones big enough to lie about something like that. Or else they were blinded by the stones we offered in payment.
Sefir got two of them started right away on the outer walls she’d laid out with a wood frame for the foundation, the earth underneath it already salted. Volund had brought a shipment of quicklime with him, and a couple of men mixed and poured it ahead of the stonecutters, who