that she was flirting and kyacting around—”
“What’s kyacting?” I whisper.
“British alien for ‘clowning at work,’” Jonoh whispers back from not far away.
“—so although you were too harsh yesterday, she still felt you deserved a fifteen on your counter. Try to play nice today, okay?” Gracie says, slapping the air with the back of her hand like she’s smacking his chest in a friendly way without actually making contact.
Bash peels his eyes from his counter to take in all the people. “Thank you…” he says gruffly.
I make my way to the closest wagon, grinning at the pride and pleasure my friend is experiencing at his accomplishment.
Then he yells my name. “ISLA! What the tevek are you carrying?”
I hold it up for him to see. “A very small rock, boss.”
“It’s still a rock! Put. It. Down before I beat you with it!”
I drop the rock and hold up my hands. “Down, boss.”
Bash snarls something and stalks towards me. “You need to recover!”
What I hear is ‘I care about you.’ I repress my happy sigh and just give him a smile. “I’m done.”
“You’re right that you are. I’ll assign you something where you won’t damage yourself. Here, take this rag. I have a tool you can polish.”
I make a face. “All day?”
Bash cuts me a look. “I have a very large tool.”
Gracie, leaning against the throne in the shade, erupts in a hacking, choking chortle. Her bowl of popcorn almost spills.
“Those little popcorn hulls,” I pretend to commiserate sadly, winking at her. “They attack you out of nowhere.”
Gracie is struggling through snickers and coughing, but Dohrein nods solemnly to me as he pats her back, his wings clamped together behind him.
Bash drops his tail over my shoulder and none-too-gently ‘guides’ me to his blacksmithing station, where I wave to Cyden the hob, who is putting on his smock and sliding on his gloves.
He smiles to me politely but only for the briefest of seconds—then he’s skedaddling as fast as a man can walk without making it look like he’s running from Bubashuu, who seems to be increasing in size behind me, his tail steering me ahead of him almost aggressively. “Here,” he grunts, stopping us in front of a tall set of thin-doored drawers. He reaches past me and opens one, pulling out a jar of burnishing powder. He hands it to me and indicates the tools that were under it. “All of these need to be cleaned and polished.” His tail spins me around. “As does this.”
We’re facing the anvil.
“How do you clean an anvil?” I ask.
“And polish.”
“Okay, how do you clean and polish an anvil?”
His scales look deep purple-red today, like a dark, dark wine, and I think this is his natural color, not yet coated with the pervasive dust of quarry stone. Likewise, his shirt is still white and his pants are still dark black, no dusting on them either. He looks sharp. “I will show you,” he says easily.
I glance down at myself and take stock. I’ve been in the quarry long enough today to have accumulated a dusty sheen on all of me. My hand comes up to check my ponytail, but I manage to stop myself. Worrying about my appearance is a waste of time. I’m presentable, and that’s the best you can hope for when you’re doing manual labor and dirty work.
As my eyes move back to the anvil, I know I’m definitely facing the latter. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
“First, start by polishing the chest of tools. This will allow me time to get your herdmates settled in their duties. Creator knows if I leave them to their own devices, I’m sure to run myself into apoplexy when I behold the damage they’ve wrought.”
“Your faith in us is stunning.”
Bash’s tail squeezes my shoulder, in warning or affection, I’m not sure.
He moves to the mouth of the open-faced shed, calling out, “You and you and you with the wild gahtusi-colored mane—yes, you, human—you will all make tiles today. Report to the head potter by the kiln house.” He points to the far end of the quarry, where he and I made the grapevine run.
Mandi—the one with the ‘gahtusi’ mane—makes the mistake of sending Bash a questioning look, and then she actually questions him. “But why? Isn’t it better for us to be useful out here—”
She stops speaking. She doesn’t trail off—her words just die. Because Bash is pinning her with all the power of his death-stare. “You think shingling isn’t useful? I challenge the lackwit who thinks