"This isn't the first time, but I'd like it to be the last," Stewart said in the office he'd inherited from his father. Sitting across from him, Stephan had the most impassive expression the King had ever seen a kobold wear. "But I can't be seen handing the case to you and Sellswell without appropriate investigation. I know Adreni is pulling a swindle, but my nobles are a little nervous considering my first major act as king was to execute one of them."

  "What do you need? We have bills of lading from the haulers. They delivered the steel mesh they were given." Stephan slid the paperwork across to Stewart. "I have the orders from Sellswell to the Viscount for the adamantine, at the current market rate." He added those documents too. "And, our own order paperwork to Sellswell for the adamantine.

  "How hard do you want us to go for her? We could just request she furnishes the goods, though I don't think we want to do more business with her. We could also request refund and charge for defaulting." Splaying his clawed fingers, careful not to scratch the desk, Stephan shrugged his shoulders. "Or we could demand recompense for sullying Travis' name in the eyes of the Northridge Barons. I don't think we could do the same with Sellswell, since they are a trading consortium."

  Stewart was acutely aware how well Stephan seemed to know not just the laws surrounding nobility, but also the contexts. Mediating between nobility, his father had told him, was like stumbling around with a lance—doing so blind would mean you end up killing the wrong person. "The Viscount will attempt to lay the blame elsewhere, as she always does. Do you have a way to pin it on her directly?"

  "No. She has buffered herself with underlings enough that any and all blame can be shifted. Still, it's her name on the orders, and her honor at stake. Not that she has much of that." The last words Stephan said under his breath, though he was sure Stewart heard them.

  "Can we make it about honor, then?" Travis asked. He'd been listening to the pair discuss the politics of nobility and how it affected trading companies.

  Stephan shrugged. "We could, but if we make it about honor, we won't get any recompense."

  "Actually, I may have a solution that lets us have both. Travis, Stephan, what I want you to do is contact the Barons of Northridge and tell them to prepare a notice of grievance, but to bring it to me. It will mean you will have to sue the Viscount directly and only yourself. You can have the Sellswells assist, and they may attempt to acquire their own share." In Stewart's mind, a plan formed that had him smiling. "I'll see to your request in ten days time. That will give everyone enough time to have their papers in order and for Viscount Adreni to craft herself a lovely figurative noose."

  All the actions in the city were, to Fife, boring background work. She would always support her friends and her new family in any way she could, but anyone big who could swing a polearm could work as an escort in the cities. She had spent a whole day polishing up her gear before she'd gotten word that Axel wanted to see her.

  "Are you in here, Axel?" Fife didn't really need to ask thanks to the sound of bellows pumping, but she wasn't going to stomp into his Blacksmithy without announcing herself.

  "Yeah! Come in. We need to have a talk about what you want made first." Working the air pumps, Axel turned his attention to Fife as she ducked under the arch of the doorway. "It seems like we get one node of divinium for every five or so adamantine."

  "And small nodes?" Fife asked.

  "With a huge upgrade to the Blacksmithy, I get one moderately sized ingot per node. This is the second." Using his tongs to lift the blob of glowing metal out, Axel carried it to his anvil. "So, what I need to know is, what do you want first?"

  Reaching up to rub at her adamantine jaw, Fife ran through her options. Two ingots wasn't enough for a breastplate, she knew that from when Axel had made her current set up. A helmet might be a good option. She liked the idea of having more protection around her face. But there was one part of her kit that was, if anything, a little lacking.

  No opponents could, one on one or even five on one, beat her down with her armor the way it was already. What she needed was options. "Two ingots. It takes one for a short sword." Fife caught Axel's nod as he hammered the metal into shape. "Could you make a blade edge that I could absorb into my wings?"

  "A sword I can do. The wing blades might take some work. You want them part of your wings, which means I need to look at your absorbed armor." Axel changed how he was striking the metal, now aiming to lengthen it into a flat blade instead of bulking it together into an ingot. "Travis, can I have the mana field again, please?"

  "You got it," Travis said, casting the spell on the room.

  "Mana field? What do you—?" Fife's words died in her throat as she saw blue flames dance up and down Axel's arms. She could see the mana pouring into him, down his arms, and into the metal. Outside of combat, and Katelyn showing off her fire magic for kids, it was the most impressive thing she'd seen. She was so distracted that she didn't look away until Axel had to put the sword blade back into the forge.

  "It was a thing that happened when I first tried to work divinium. I felt like it was draining something from me and guessed it might be mana. When Trav made the room regenerate mana fast, and I worked on the first divinium item, I guess it made me a better metalworker. Steel and adamantine don't even get cool anymore while I'm working them, and divinium stays hotter longer." He tried to ignore Fife as she began unbuckling and removing armor. It wasn't that she was a woman and disrobing, but rather he felt drawn to admire the armor he'd made for her. "Any problems with that?"

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  "Aren't you already seeing someone? I swear, asking a girl to help take off her armo—"

  His own reaction to the teasing thankfully hidden in the wash of light from the forge, Axel shook his head. "No, I meant the armor as a whole. Have you had any problems with it rubbing or wearing out its straps?"

  Fife smirked. "The armor has been great. It's weathered everything thrown at me." Slipping the last strap free of its buckle, she parted the cuirass and set the front and back-plate down over the shoulders of the wooden armor stand. Beside that stand was a duplicate that already had some rough leather clothes on. She lifted a shirt from it and pulled it over her head. "Any of Astrid's pack changed their double-armor preferences?"

  "Liv has me making the thinnest adamantine breastplate I can, but apart from her, the others are using mithril chain as their absorbed armor. Are you thinking of changing?" Axel put the blade back in the forge after some hammering, and walked over to see what Fife's absorbed armor looked like.

  "Huh, will that help?" Fife asked, gesturing to the wings that were now part of the adamantine armor as she set it on the second armor stand.

  "It'll give me something to attach the divinium to. I'll have to come up with a way to attach it so it can be transferred to any other upgrades you get." Axel didn't bother to hide his smile. "You have first call for a suit of armor, but once things are all figured out, who's to say you don't end up with a second?"

  "Now you're going to make me blush." Smiling like an idiot, Fife could only imagine the level of protection that would give her. "I already have to strip down to light armor to fight in the training dungeons. You think they'd let me keep a suit of divinium absorbed if I don't have anything else?"

  "Would that be fair?" With a tablet he'd made that used gold instead of wax, Axel began measuring the wings on the armor and writing down what he'd need to make so blades could be riveted on. "Okay, so I should have enough to do it. I'll have to rivet the blades on using some adamantine rivets, but it'll work."

  That's when Fife remembered she was meant to be leading a hunt in the new dungeon. "How long will it take?"

  Going back to fetch the sword from the forge, Axel shrugged his shoulders. "When it's done. This stuff isn't easy to work. I can already feel this blade recognizing its purpose. Right now it's goading me to finish it, but we'll see. The wing blades are going to need a little more work. Tomorrow?"

  "If you can have a sword and wing blades ready by tomorrow, I'll be a very happy dragon. You heard the successor to the goblin dungeon has shown up? Seems to be an animal variant of some kind. Tannyr ran into a bunch of pixies that tried to kidnap her. So, I'm going in with Astrid and Breath to ask it very nicely to stop." With her breastplate and absorbed breastplate missing, Fife felt a little underdressed. "Can I leave it all to you, then?"

  "Yeah. Go on. I can definitely manage with the first serious divinium items I'll mak—" He cut off as a kobold he didn't recognize walked in with three more of the small ore-bearing stones. "Divinium?"

  "One divinium, two platinum. Lady Katelyn asked if you could cast some ingots of the platinum for her," the kobold said, setting them down on a wooden pallet where Axel told him to. "Good luck!"

  Fife grinned at Axel. "Shield next," she said, and got a nod from him.

  With Fife watching on, Axel began the process of finishing the blade. Unlike the nail, which only ever had one goal in life, a blade could be focused onto several paths. "This is your sword. Come over here and tell it what you want it to do."

  "Huh?" Fife followed his directions and leaned over the anvil while Axel hammered on it. "What do you—" The blue fire that flowed down Axel's arms flowed outward and toward her too. The fire didn't burn her physically, but it demanded she feed it something all the same. "Oh…"

  The blade demanded a purpose. If Fife was to be its master, she felt she had to provide that purpose to it. "I'm the one who stands between everyone that matters to me and the bad things," she said, "and what I need a sword to be is my vanguard. You'll go before me and teach the bad things why they don't threaten my friends. You'll punish them. And, you'll kill them. I need a sword that will kill every time I need it to." She wasn't sure what else to say. Fife could be eloquent when she wanted to, but she'd simply run out of words to describe a sword she could use that would never fail her.

  But it was enough for the divinium. As Axel's hammer fell against it, it used the magic he poured down with each strike to pattern itself after Fife's will. Lines of force that channeled its god-given ability to actualize a power to make the point of it a nexus. The metal found its purpose and cooled rapidly, not waiting for physics or its smith's will to finish it.

  Staring at the sword blade, it had cooled enough that when Axel reached toward it, it had cooled enough to pick up with his gloved hand. He worked quickly, not bothering to quench the metal that no longer needed it. He fitted a cross guard and began wrapping a handle into place. It felt like he'd been overcome with feverish energy, but at last he had the sword in his hands and inspected it. It didn't want to be there, he felt, it wanted the one who'd given it purpose.

  Fife watched as Axel cursed at the blade and stomped over to her. She missed what he said as her hand closed over the hilt. The weapon drank deep of her magic. "Whoa." She examined the blade's tip, which now seemed to hum with energy.

  It didn't just look sharp, it screamed it. To her mana sight, Fife could see a small translucent jacket of magic around the end of the weapon that tapered to a point so infinitesimally small that she suspected it continued down beyond what she could see. In some of Travis' books she'd read about things so small they needed special glass instruments to see, or even whole rooms of things she could understand less of than Travis did. It reminded her of the latter.

  Holding it up and turning away from Axel, she tried a few casual swings, then stabbed forward with it.

  The sword pierced the air and dragged Fife along after it. Her excitement grew as the weapon danced through the air in her hand. For something that she knew weighed almost as much as the adamantine sword she normally used, it felt like a weightless extension of her will. "I can't wait for those wing blades. But those can wait for tomorrow."

  All her life she'd done her best to get the most effective armor and weapons she could, but in her hand Fife realized she had the best sword in the whole kingdom.

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