Suzail streets could never be truly described as "peaceful," yet the smithy sat, quietly and calmly, on a short wooden stool between his bellows and his anvil.
While he was working, the cracking of the forge's flame and the high pitched cry of metal on grindstone always drowned out the pressing haggling, chatter, and laughter that came from the marketplace and bustling streets. Even when he wasn't working, the more gentle, natural sounds of the area- birds, insects, or the arguments that one neighbor's pet might have with another in the street- were hard for him to truly notice, simply because over time, they had all become familiar. So, it had become his practice, strangely enough, after the noontime tolling of the large bell in the towers of Tymora, to sit calmly in his shop with his back to the street and try to pick out as many different sounds of the city as he could. Aleksei, upon hearing of this custom the first time, told Stephen that focusing his attentions carefully on each sound was a practice close akin to meditation, and refused to remain in the shop while it was done.
On this particular day, Stephen had spent two or three calm moments alone before noticing the uncertain advance of someone coming toward the shop. Slow to come out of his reverie, he decided to pretend he didn't hear it, hoping that whoever it was would simply think him unavailable to be spoken with.
No such luck.
"Ser Raibeart?" a male voice growled. There was some effort to it, as though the speaker were either old, ill, or had been somehow made unused to sounding its voice. Stephen looked over his shoulder, and saw a robed and hooded figure. The hood and heavy robe made it impossible to tell who the person was, so the blacksmith turned all the way around, in case he were being addressed by someone important.
"There's more than one by that name," he joked affably, trying to seem more pleasant than he felt. "Which do you seek?"
"You, friend; unless some junior now commands the forge," the hooded figure replied. "I want a two handed sword."
"A greatsword, a claymore, or a bastard sword?" Stephen asked, biting back his skepticism. As he expected, the hooded figure paused to think. When the person did finally speak, however, there was no uncertain wavering to the given answer.
"A greatsword."
"Single blade, or dual?"
"Dual," came the firm reply, much faster and surer than the first.
"That's masterwork," Stephen replied, looking the figure up and down carefully. "Come back in a week."
"A week?" the figure asked. It was impossible to tell, without seeing the person's face, whether the question had been a joke or not. "I believed that I was sent to the commissioned blacksmith, not to some cheap farrier."
Something in what was left of the speaker's natural voice sparked a suspicion in his hearer.
"With all the respect that's due you, father," Stephen countered slowly, "had you sought the farrier, you'd not buy her work cheaply, and she'd tell you the same as I have. What I wonder is what good a weapon made by either one of us will do a monk."
"The piece is not to be mine," the figure stated. "I'm on errand."
"On errand?" Stephen scoffed, now sure of the identity of the speaker. "You're going to have to try harder than that... Father Firehammer."
The figure gave a single, short puff that could be mistaken for a chuckle. "How sorely have I earned that name," he said, pulling his hood back at last. Both eyes, once clear and greenish-brown, had been cast over with what appeared to be grey film. He'd lost all his hair, even from his eyelids and brows, and his face was so blotched, scabbed, and bloated that at first, all Stephen could do was stare at him.
"Some wicked pack of Semmites, feigning themselves an escort, took us from the 'dangerous' eastern isles toward open water. When they discovered that we were hauling no valuable cargo, and that we could not in any way pay our way out of their embrace, they shot flaming arrows into our sails and left us to die."
"No secure transports?" Stephen said, still marveling at Iona's appearance.
"No Cormyrean vessels of any kind sail past the Pirate Isles," Iona replied, his damage-graveled voice made even more harsh by mocking. "Especially not for poor brothers. We sailed out and returned with the coin of good-will alone, so I'm sorry to have repaid the captain that agreed to take us with the loss of his ship. He'll be out of work at least a month. Longer, if he commissions a ship anywhere near as good as the one he lost."
Stephen grunted, then consciously uncrossed his arms, opting instead to smooth his hands on his thighs. "His healer isn't worth any coin at all," he huffed. "Can you still see?"
"Dimly," Iona replied. "The captain's healer was lost- jumped ship on first sight of the arrows. Another boat, captained by a woman called 'Lord Hawke,' came upon us at sundown, because they had seen smoke-now, she commanded an alchemist. Sailors from Urmlaspyr believe that magic workers on ships are 'bad luck'- I dared not say then that Cormyrians believe the same of women, obviously."
"Obviously," Stephen parroted with a quiet laugh. "Rough dealing, selling religion in the Pirate Isles."
"So wrote the abbott when he recalled us. If your son has time, or even your wife or daughters, I need one of them to write to Marsember, and see if the brothers are waiting for my return."
"I'll have Sly see to you," Stephen said firmly. "Think of as many 'M' words as you can- that's been his fixation, lately."
Iona's face pulled very painfully into what should have been a smile. "I'll see what I can do, Papa Raibeart."
Completely oblivious to his brother's company, Iordyn thundered downstairs with a quarterstaff that smelled of sap. "Stephen, Saul just m-"
"Iordi?" Iona asked at once, fruitlessly trying to peer across the room. "Is that you?"
"Iona!" Iordyn exclaimed breathlessly, as stunned by his brother's actual presence as he was by his words.
Stephen watched quietly as Iona stretched his swollen, cracking hands out toward his youngest brother. Iordyn put Saul's staff down entirely, and almost ran to the other side of the shop. Seeing the burn damage, however, he delicately put his hands under his brother's, and allowed the latter to determine how he could and should be embraced.
"Thank the gods," Iona breathed, squeezing his nearly useless eyes shut as he hugged Iordyn as hard as he could stand. "Word of the charges against you reached the Isles after I'd left. It caught up with me at Urmlaspyr, but was nearly a month old. I'd thought that by the time I arrived-"
"Does this hurt?" Iordyn murmured, closing his own eyes and enjoying the hug as much as he could. "What happened?"
"That I may hurt, boy, when I thought you dead?" Iona rasped, truly incredulous and joyfully joking all at once. "Tell me- how did you win such a case?"
Iordyn looked as far over his shoulder as he could, and saw that Stephen had put one hand over his face.
"I... didn't," he answered, a bit bewildered. "I was enlisted to help the Dragons get to the bottom of a suspected Sembian plot, but the suing widow lost right of claim owing to being guilty of treason, so I got an exemption. Shortest enlistment time of all of us, wasn't it?"
"I wasn't enlisted at all," Iona smirked. "Not for lack of trying. Does the commissioned blacksmith count?"
Iordyn listened to Stephen's quiet, muffled grunt before speaking again. "I say he does, and I think Susanna would agree- say, you didn't go up to see Suze, have you? She's heavy and weary with the baby, but glowing brighter and brighter every day."
"I didn't want to inflict my visage upon her," Iona joked bitterly, finally standing back from Iordyn. "Might her husband carry her my quiet reguards?"
"No," Stephen rumbled, his face still under his hand. "And don't leave without saluting her."
"No ser," Iona said, looking toward the shadowy figure that he knew was Stephen.
Stephen only grunted in response, and Iordyn cast a mildly confused gaze at the blacksmith himself.
"Heard you made quite an impression in Marsember," Iordyn said slowly, very gently running a finger over the puffy flesh and flaky skin. "Suze said Papa's letter nearly burned the fingers off her hands, for how furious he was."
"Same old short temper," Iona sighed. "I don't know what happened at the hall, but when I made it to the border here, I was warned to behave myself."
"You... uh... told the entire congregation of Morningmist Hall that if they didn't repent as soon as possible, the temple would fall in on them and kill them," Iordyn said meekly, as though he were admitting to something that he wished he hadn't done. "People ran from the place as though they'd been attacked- screaming and crying."
"Ha?" Iona breathed, with a touch of amusement. "That's certainly worthy of a soldier's caution, yes. I wish I could have more knowledgeably promised my consent to his behest."
For a few moments, no one was sure what to say. The sounds that Stephen normally had to work so hard to notice became suddenly too loud for him not to notice, in the absence of his brother's voices. Iordyn looked from one to the other while shifting his stance, feeling very much as cotton-wrapped and ignorant as he had been in his youth.
"You... also said that Mama's useless prayers were making Lathander's ears bleed," he finally said. The words fell thickly out of his mouth, as though they'd been made of lead.
"That's well-deserved," Iona scoffed bitterly. "I wish I'd seen her face."
Iordyn stared at Iona strangely. "You didn't...?"
"No," Iona replied before Iordyn could finish his question. "Once I crossed the threshold of that temple, I was not my own. I heard and saw nothing until the soldier spoke to me, here."
Iordyn took a deep breath, then asked, "Was it... like that... when your intended died?"
Iona pursed his lips and gave one slow, small nod, as though the admission were physically painful.
"What was her name?" Iordyn suddenly asked, consumed by curiosity.
Iona looked at his younger brother quizzically.
"Stephen said he didn't remember it, when he told the tale to myself and Aleksei- he's... eh... he's a guest here right now. Of how you went into ministry in the first place."
"I went into ministry because I'd been called, albeit years before," Iona answered firmly. "I selfishly tried to use the marriage as a pitiful attempt to escape the mandate of Tyr on my life- and for that, I was severely punished."
Iordyn hummed his agreement, and Iona looked past him to see what he could of his elder brother, who still had his hand over his face as though he were physically tired. "Stephen, why didn't-"
"I never used it," came the solid reply, before Iona could finish the question. "You know I never used it."
A cough-like laugh escaped the incredulous Iona. "That's true enough, but not because you forgot it. You'll never forget it- knowing you, you wish you could. Why didn't you tell him the whole story?"
"He said he did," Iordyn cut in, mildly hurt.
"But you left out her name?" Iona scoffed. "You couldn't bear to say it, is what you should have said. At least that would have been nearer the truth."
Again, Stephen only emitted a low, short grunt.
"Finish the story, Stephen," Iona dared, stepping forward with confidence and the beginnings of a rumble in his voice. "Who carried the body back to the family? Who paid for the burial? Who treated that woman like a person, not like an achievement trophy, a monument to normalcy, a barricade against the will of a god-"
Stephen turned away from Iona, who responded by surging forward and grabbing the blacksmith's thick, muscular upper arm as tightly as he could. Stephen whirled around sharply, but suddenly stopped, as though he'd been hit with a basin full of ice water.
"At least say her name," Iona encouraged. "I shouldn't; you know that."
"Renurielle," Stephen said very quietly, so that Iordyn could hardly hear him at all.
"The abbot must have dragged hours of confession out of me, full of regret, anger, and bitterness." Iona waited a few moments before reaching out to place his hand on his eldest brother's upper arm again. "And I... anyway, I... I found your old master. He said you broke that anvil in two and buried it."
"Yeah," Stephen answered quietly, looking down at Iona's hand.
"Wouldn't tell me where."
Stephen gave a very small, sharp nod of satisfaction. "Good."
Iona laughed bitterly, and let his elder brother go.
"You told that story like you didn't care," Iordyn suddenly piped up. "Why'd you pretend like you didn't care?"
"He can't afford feelings," Iona replied simply. "Not when he makes a habit of standing like a stone wall between that which'll hurt and that what'll hurt it."
"Shut that up," Stephen muttered, turning away from both of his younger brothers again.
"But we're safe, now. You can talk; you can tell the truth," Iona pressed.
"Hush," was all Stephen would say.
"What do you mean, 'safe'?" Iordyn asked quietly, his concern printing itself plainly on his face. "Safe from what?"
"You're fine," Stephen interrupted, fighting back the sensation of wanting to spit.
"Bullshit, Stephen," Iona shot back.
"The past is the past," Stephen interjected, cutting Iona off with a short, sharp wave. "Things have ch-"
"Ignore the past, and it returns as the future," Iona charged. "You know more than Leena, and Ronny, and I put together. You saw it all; comforted the crying-"
"Listen, there's no need to dredge this stuff up like-"
"-took the brunt of Papa's battlefield madness, most of the blame-"
"-it's still happening; we ought to just move on, and let them try to-"
"-for drawing the irrational anger, tried fruitlessly to explain to Mama-"
"-move on themselves, because they're old. They don't have that much longer, and-"
"-why we had to get as far as we could, fast as we could! Like senseless animals, fleeing a wildfire!"
"Iona! Shut it!" Stephen finally hollered, shouting his brother into stillness.
"Don't you tell your brother to shut it," Susanna called from across the room. "You'd be growling like a bear, if you heard Saul say such a thing to Sly."
"Lady Raibeart-" Iona began, struggling to find the source of her voice.
"And you, with this 'lady, lady,' as though I hadn't been family for years now," Susanna frowned. "The absolute least you could do for the lady is come to her front door, and greet her properly, instead of sneaking down to the shop to have your brothers call out your name, like a pair of town square news criers. If not for that, I'd not have known you were even here."
"Oof, no prisoners this day," Iona replied, pretending to have been physically winded by Susanna's words.
"Nor closeted skeletons neither," Susanna said sternly, crossing her arms as firmly as she could. "Now, Elder Brother Raibeart, I'm going to go back upstairs now, to set the evening table for eleven. That will, as anyone might imagine, take me a while. I expect that you will have settled whatever it is that has you snarling and snapping at your younger brothers by the time I send Sarai to call you all."
Silence.
"Thank you, Mama Raibeart," Stephen replied after a full minute had gone by. "I will."
More silence while all three men watched Susanna move determinedly up the stairs, grasping the banister that Stephen had newly built as though it were the arm of a trusted friend.
"Taricia owes a lot to Susanna, I think," Iona commented with a smirk after the three of them listened to the opening and closing of the door at the top of the stairs. "Quite a lot indeed."
Stephen gave a wordless, half-hearted shrug.
"She's been worried," Iona urged. "Wrote to ask me back before the abbot did, to come speak to you. I told her I might be just what you don't need, but she asked me to try anyway, for the sliver of hope that she has that you'll talk to me like a blood brother, if not a holy one. No matter what it takes, though, she doesn't intend to just drum her fingers on her belly while your mind somehow becomes some distant foreign country from which you rarely, if ever, return."
Both brothers watched patiently as Stephen walked back over to his stool and sat down. At first, he crossed his arms over his chest, patting one hand on the thick meat of his other arm.
"I don't know why it happens," he began quietly. "I just- go cold. When I... come back, I... it's embarrassing. We have four- five children, soon. If they lock me away, she'll starve."
"You'd have to be a nutter, for them to lock you away," Iona advised. "Soldiers that have- no, wait, hear me out. You didn't go to war, but you did fight our father almost every day. He pulled no punches for you. Literally. And what has happened to the thousands of soldiers who came back from Sembia... that's what's happening to you."
Stephen patted his hand on his upper arm again- a slow, methodical smacking that Iordyn suddenly recognized.
"That," he proclaimed flatly, pointing to his brother's offending hand. "You do that. Almost all the time- is that part of it?"
Stephen stopped himself before hitting his arm again and rubbed both hands down his face with a deep sigh. "Maybe. I don't know. But usually, Suze stops me, so she must think it's something."
"Talk," Iona reassured. "To me, to Iordyn- to your wife, please. But talk about it. That's what the abbot did for me, what Taricia is doing for Ronny, and what Finn is doing for Leena. These- cold spells, these absences? They're like warnings. Heed them, Stephen."
Stephen was quiet for a few moments. He breathed slowly and deeply a few times, then nodded. Iordyn wordlessly walked over to Stephen, and before he could even look all the way up, he found himself the recipient of a fierce hug.
"You have put on a bit of patience, in your advanced years," Iona joked. "If I'd hugged you like that, back in the day, you'd have grabbed me by the hair to pull me off."
"He did that for something else; we can tell you the whole story upstairs," Iordyn smirked as he loosened his hug so that he could turn around to look at Iona. "With some of the other participants in it, too. Come on; come up, so that Suze doesn't have to send Sarai after us."
Stephen rose slowly, as though he were tired or sore, but managed a weak smile. Iordyn let go entirely and moved off toward the stairs, but Iona only took a few tentative steps.
"How's your back?" Stephen asked quietly, with his head ducked down as though he intended to rest it on his brother's shoulder.
"Whole enough to be touched," Iona replied knowingly. "The brothers tend to take that, or my elbow, to help me find my way."
"Good enough."
And with that, the blacksmith placed a gentle hand on the center of the monk's back, and began to slowly move toward the stairs up to the house.
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