The fire had been burning for three hours when Hannah realized she was being watched.
She didn't look up. Didn't change the rhythm of her hammer. She had learned, in the months since Samuel died, that the village watched her constantly. Waiting for her to fail. Waiting for her to break. Waiting for something to happen that would prove what they already believed—that a woman alone could not do a man's work.
Let them watch.
She was working on a new project. Not the knife—not yet. That would require materials she didn't have, techniques she hadn't practiced in years. First, she needed to relearn the basics. Samuel's notebooks were spread on a clean barrel by the wall, held open with stones against their urge to close. Page after page of his careful hand, diagrams and notes and questions he'd asked himself and answered.
"Why does a blade hold an edge?" one entry read. "Not because it is hard. Because it is hard in the right places and soft in others. A blade that is hard everywhere will shatter. A blade that is soft everywhere will bend. The art is in the difference."
Hannah was making a knife. Not the duke's knife—a simple blade, practice work. But she was trying to do it Samuel's way. Differential hardening. Heating the spine and edge separately. Quenching at exactly the right moment.
Her first three attempts had cracked.
Her fourth was in the fire now, waiting.
The watcher at the door shifted weight. Footsteps on packed earth. A clearing of throat.
Hannah still didn't look up. "If you're going to stand there, you might as well come in. You're letting the cold in anyway."
A pause. Then footsteps.
The man who entered was not from the village. Hannah knew that immediately. His boots were too fine, his cloak too well-made, his hands too clean. He was young—maybe twenty—with the soft face of someone who had never missed a meal. But his eyes were old. Old and tired and full of something Hannah recognized.
Grief.
"You're the smith?" he asked.
"I'm the smith."
He looked around the forge, taking in the tools, the fire, the cracked knives on the workbench. "I was told the smith here was a man. Samuel, I think."
"Samuel was my husband. He died."
The young man's face did something complicated. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"Few people do. They just know he's gone and I'm here." Hannah finally looked at him directly. "What do you need?"
He hesitated. Then he reached under his cloak and produced a sword.
It was a soldier's blade, plain and functional, but even in the forge's dim light Hannah could see that something was wrong. The edge was chipped in three places. The crossguard was bent. And the grip—the grip was wrapped in fresh leather, poorly done, hiding something.
"Can you fix it?" he asked.
Hannah took the sword. It was heavier than it should be. She turned it over, ran her thumb along the flat of the blade, felt the subtle irregularities that spoke of poor maintenance and harder use.
"Whose was this?"
The young man's jaw tightened. "Mine."
"Was."
A long silence. The fire crackled. Somewhere outside, a rooster crowed.
"It was my father's," he said finally. "He carried it for twenty years. Through three campaigns. Through..." He stopped. Swallowed. "He died last month. In a skirmish near the eastern pass. They sent his things back. This was among them."
Hannah looked at the sword again. At the chips, the bent guard, the fresh leather that someone had wrapped in haste, maybe in grief, trying to make the sword whole again.
"I'm sorry for your loss," she said. It was the same words everyone used, hollow and useless. But she meant them.
The young man nodded. Didn't speak.
Hannah carried the sword to her workbench and laid it in the light. She examined the edge closely, running her thumbnail along the chips. Three deep, one shallow. The kind of damage that came from blocking heavy blows, probably from an axe or a mace. The kind of damage that meant the wielder had been fighting for his life.
The bent crossguard told the same story. A blow that had slipped past the blade, caught on the guard, bent it inward. Another inch and it would have broken fingers. Another inch and—
She stopped that line of thinking.
"I can fix it," she said. "But it won't be cheap. And it won't be fast."
"How long?"
"A week. Maybe more. The edge needs to be reforged, not just sharpened. The guard needs to be heated and straightened carefully, or it'll snap. And this grip—" she touched the fresh leather "—needs to come off. Whatever's underneath needs attention."
The young man's face tightened. "The grip was my work. I thought... I thought I could at least do that much."
Hannah looked at him. At his too-clean hands, his young face, his old eyes. A boy who had lost his father and didn't know what to do with the grief.
"You did fine," she said. "For a first attempt. But the leather will rot if it's not cured properly, and whatever's underneath—if there's rust, if there's damage—it'll just get worse. Let me do it right. You can watch, if you want. Learn something."
He stared at her. "You'd let me watch?"
"I'm not a guild master with secrets to protect. I'm a village smith." She gestured at the forge. "This isn't magic. It's just work. Anyone can learn."
The young man's eyes went to the cracked knives on her bench. "Doesn't look easy."
"It's not. But nothing worth doing is."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "My name is Aldric. Aldric Vane."
"Hannah."
"I know." A pause. "The innkeeper told me about you. Said you were... controversial."
Hannah almost laughed. "That's one word for it."
"What's the other?"
She considered. "Temporary. According to some."
Aldric looked around the forge again. At the fire, burning hot and clean. At the tools, hung in order. At the cracked knives, evidence of struggle, of trying and failing and trying again.
"You're still here," he said. "That's not temporary."
Hannah didn't answer. She wasn't sure what to say.
Instead, she picked up her hammer. "Come here. I'll show you how to strip that grip."
---
The morning passed in work.
Aldric was a poor student at first—too hesitant, too afraid of doing wrong. But he listened. He watched. He asked questions that weren't stupid. By midday, he had removed the grip himself, revealing the tang beneath: rusted, pitted, but still solid.
"Good," Hannah said. "Now we clean it."
She showed him how to use wire wool, how to apply oil, how to tell the difference between surface rust and deep corrosion. He worked slowly, carefully, his too-clean hands soon black with grime.
"You're not what I expected," he said at one point, not looking up.
"What did you expect?"
"A man. Old. Grizzled. Full of war stories."
Hannah snorted. "I have war stories. Just not the kind you're thinking of."
"What kind, then?"
She thought about it. The day Samuel's conscription notice came. The morning he left. The afternoon the soldier appeared at her door with the news. The months after, full of silence and cold meals and children who didn't understand why Papa wasn't coming home.
"The kind where you don't fight," she said. "You just wait. And survive."
Aldric looked up. His eyes were very clear. "That's the hardest kind."
"Is it?"
"I think so." He went back to work. "I've done both. Fighting is... it's fast. You don't have time to think. Waiting..." He shook his head. "Waiting is slow. You feel everything."
Hannah watched him for a moment. A boy who had fought. A boy who had waited. A boy who had lost someone and didn't know what to do with the empty space.
"What was your father like?" she asked.
Aldric's hands stopped moving. For a long moment, he didn't speak.
"He was a good man," he said finally. "Not a great one. Not a hero. Just... good. He believed in things. The kingdom. The king. Doing your duty." A pause. "He believed the war would end. That we'd go home. That he'd see my mother again."
"But he didn't."
"No." Aldric's voice was very quiet. "He died in a skirmish no one will remember. For a piece of ground that doesn't matter. And they sent his sword home instead of him."
The forge was silent except for the fire.
Hannah thought of Samuel. Of the empty side of the bed. Of the mornings she still reached for him before remembering.
"My husband died the same way," she said. "First battle. They told me it was quick. I don't know if I believe them."
Aldric looked at her. "You don't have to."
"No. I don't."
They worked in silence after that. But it was a different silence. Shared.
---
By late afternoon, the tang was clean. Hannah showed Aldric how to oil it, how to wrap it in cloth to protect it while they worked on the blade.
"Come back in three days," she said. "The edge should be ready by then. We'll start on the guard."
Aldric nodded. He reached for his purse.
Hannah shook her head. "Pay me when it's done. If you're not satisfied, you don't pay."
"That's not how most smiths work."
"I'm not most smiths."
He almost smiled. "No. You're not." He hesitated, then extended his hand. "Thank you, Hannah."
She took it. His grip was firm, soldier-trained, but his palm was soft. A man learning to be what he wasn't yet.
"Three days," she said.
He left.
Hannah watched him go, then turned back to her fire. The practice knife was still waiting, its metal glowing in the coals. She pulled it out, examined it, saw the hairline crack that had formed along the spine.
Another failure.
She set it aside and reached for a fresh piece of steel.
"Again," Samuel whispered.
Again.
---
That evening, Lena confronted her.
"You let him watch you work."
Hannah was stirring the supper pot, too tired to think. "He paid. Well. Eventually."
"That's not the point." Lena stood in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, looking far older than ten. "You never let me watch. You never teach me anything."
Hannah's stirring slowed. "Lena—"
"You say it's no life for a girl. You say I should learn other things. Cooking. Sewing. How to be a proper wife." Lena's voice was sharp, hurt. "But that man—a stranger—you let him stand at your bench. You showed him things."
Hannah set down the spoon. She turned to face her daughter.
"It's different."
"How?"
How to explain? How to tell her daughter that the forge was where Hannah went to be close to Samuel, to feel him in the heat and the hammer and the endless work? How to say that watching Lena learn the craft would hurt in a way she couldn't bear, because Samuel should have been the one to teach her?
"It just is."
Lena's face crumpled. For a moment, Hannah thought she would cry. But Lena was Samuel's daughter too, and she had his stubbornness.
"When I'm grown," Lena said, "I'm going to learn anyway. From someone. Anyone. And I'll be better than you. You'll see."
She turned and walked out.
Hannah stood alone in the kitchen, the fire crackling, the stew cooling, her daughter's words hanging in the air.
"I'll be better than you."
She hoped so. She hoped Lena would be better at everything—at living, at loving, at holding onto the people she loved instead of losing them. She hoped Lena would never know what it felt like to stand in a cold forge and wait for a husband who would never come home.
But she also hoped—selfishly, fiercely—that Lena would one day understand. That the forge wasn't just work. That it was memory. That it was love. That it was the only place Hannah still felt Samuel beside her.
She went back to stirring the stew.
---
That night, after the children were asleep, Hannah returned to the forge.
She lit a single lantern and opened Samuel's notebooks again. The old book from Master Theron. The diagrams, the notes, the secrets.
And she found it.
A page titled: "The Knife of Proof."
"Before a student may attempt the lost technique," Theron had written, "they must first prove themselves worthy. The Knife of Proof is a test—a blade of specific dimensions and materials, forged under specific conditions, quenched at exactly the right moment. It must hold an edge against seven trials. It must bend and return to true. It must not break.
"Many students fail. Some fail a hundred times. But those who succeed—those who forge the Knife of Proof—have shown the patience, the skill, and the heart required for the greater work.
"To forge the knife is to forge yourself."
Hannah read the page three times.
Then she turned to the specifications.
They were almost identical to Master Aldwin's commission.
The same dimensions. The same materials. The same impossible standards.
She sat back, her heart pounding.
Aldwin knew. He knew about the lost technique, about the Knife of Proof, about everything. He had given her a test—a test she was meant to fail. A test that would prove she was unworthy of Samuel's legacy.
But if she passed...
If she passed, she would have more than a commission. She would have proof. Proof that she belonged in the forge. Proof that Samuel's trust in her was not misplaced. Proof that she was more than just a widow doing a dead man's work.
She looked at the practice knives on her bench. Five failures. Five cracks, five breaks, five times she had tried and failed.
But she was still trying.
"Again," Samuel whispered.
Again.
Hannah picked up a fresh piece of steel and carried it to the fire.
---
The night was long. The work was hard. The knife cracked again at midnight, and again at two in the morning, and again at four.
But at dawn, as the sky began to lighten beyond the shuttered windows, Hannah held a blade that had not cracked.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't the Knife of Proof. But it was whole. It was sharp. It was hers.
She set it on the workbench and stood looking at it.
Her hands ached. Her back burned. Her eyes were gritty with exhaustion.
But for the first time in six months, Hannah smiled.
---
The sound of horses came from the road.
Hannah frowned. It was early for travelers, too early for merchants. She moved to the forge door and looked out.
A column of men on horseback was approaching Ironvale. Soldiers, by their look—worn leather armor, tired faces, weapons visible. At their head rode a man with a captain's badge and a blood-soaked bandage around his arm.
They weren't riding fast. They were riding like men who had been running for a long time and had nowhere left to go.
Behind them, on the road, Hannah could see dust.
More riders. Pursuers.
The column reached the village well and stopped. The captain looked around, saw Hannah at her forge door, and urged his horse toward her.
"Smith," he said. His voice was rough, exhausted. "We need your forge. Now."
Hannah looked at the blood on his arm. At the tired men behind him. At the dust on the road, growing closer.
"What happened?" she asked.
The captain's face was grim. "We lost."
---
End of Chapter Three