4:28 And all that sass.

Stephen purposefully listened to the pulse of the market beyond the shop and the occasional hiss and crackle of the waiting forge behind him as he gazed at the solid staff he held in his right hand.

"It's acceptable," he finally commented, turning himself around and holding the staff out for his eldest boy to reclaim.  "Smart choice of woods, clean inlay seams, resin's holding well- I'd say this is a piece worthy of use."

For just a second, Saul's practiced stoic face cracked, and his father saw the barest flash of the little boy who had once tried to make a dagger out of a spoon that he'd found at the edge of the midden.  Saul calmed himself almost right away, and Stephen knew better than to show any indication that he'd seen that little boy at all.  Deep within himself, an amazed young man quietly marveled that not only did he have a son at all, but that said son was trying so hard to make him proud.  But having had far more experience at silencing his more tender emotions, not a single whisper of that young man made its way past the commissioned blacksmith's solid visage.

"Thank you, m'lord," Saul said seriously as he took hold of the staff.  "May I put it away in my corner and begin another?"

Stephen allowed an affirmative hum to roll around in his chest before answering with words.  "Prepare me a staff similar to this one, but with only one type of wood.  Choose for yourself what type you want to work with, but bear in mind that whatever it is, it will have to stand up to being joined with steel."

If there had been any emotion at the idea of working with metal at last, Saul made no show of them whatsoever.

"Will it be a heavy piece of metal, m'lord?" the boy asked, obviously trying to suss out what type of weapon his father had in mind.

"Heavy for you, perhaps," Stephen exhaled as he put his hands on his knees and got up.  "But that's why I'm going to forge it.  You're going to make the base, watch me make the ouchy end, watch me finish a similar weapon, and then let me talk you through fitting the ouchy end I'll have made to the base that you'll have made.  Go on, put that away and see whether or not you need to go down to the wood cutters."

"Yes, m'lord," Saul answered evenly.  Just as he turned to do as he was told, Sly appeared with Iona at the top of the steps down from the house to the shop.  Still sore at their most recent dust up, Saul opted to pretend that he hadn't seen his brother.  Stephen sighed and ducked slightly to watch Sly place Iona's hand on the bannister, wondering what could be so important that his younger son had allowed himself to be moved out of the sitting room or the kitchen.

"Greet your brother, Sly," he advised.  "And let him know if you could use a hand getting your uncle down here safely."

A gristly silence weighed heavy in the air.

"Good afternoon, Saul," Sly managed with a tight voice as he tentatively began descending the steps behind his uncle.  "Uncle Iona, are you-"

"I don't feel as though I'll tumble to the bottom quite yet," Iona interrupted.  "Both of our elder brothers can keep their distance."

Saul looked at his father out of the corner of his eye as he pretended to gaze at the various cuts of wood that were stacked at the far inside wall of the shop.  Stephen still seemed unperturbed, with his arms crossed over his chest and one eyebrow raised in distant amusement, despite his image being partially obscured and made watery by the warm forge between himself and the boy peeking at him.  But with the intuition that just a few years had thrust upon him, Saul knew that some deep, well-buried stress crack within the massive weapon that was his father had been suddenly and sharply struck.

Stephen continued to quietly watch Iona and Sly until both sets of feet had found solid ground again, thanking all the extant gods that Susanna's last few pregnancies, despite not bringing forth any children, had prompted him to build something for one to lean on as they descended those narrow wooden steps.  Without it, Sly would have had to physically keep Iona from veering off to one side or another without missing a step or pitching forward himself.

"Okay," Sly breathed, satisfied, when he saw that both of Iona's well-wrapped feet were on the ground.  "Papa, where might the good map be?  I looked all over in the shrine and couldn't find it."

"What do you need with it?" Stephen asked, sitting himself back down on the stool behind him.

"We need to review the ports of the western nations," Iona replied.

"I don't know them for memory," Sly admitted.  "I don't want to... make a mistake."

Saul pried his mind away from his brother's business, knowing he had been standing around in front of the wood pile too long.  He absentmindedly rubbed at his eyes, then remembered that they had sap on them.

"I sent it back to the cartographer," Stephen answered, forcing himself to be satisfied with the partial answers he'd heard.  From the corner of his eye, he noticed Saul trying his best to get something that had irritated him off his face, but figured that he could handle that on his own.  "It's been some land discovered down south, so it wanted either updating or replacing.  Why did you bring your uncle all the way down here to ask me that?  And I hope you haven't left your sister alone, in the sitting room with that little boutique of yours, for anyone to take advantage of."

"She's fine, but Sarai's sitting with her anyway," Sly in a tone much sharper than he'd intended.  Regret immediately burned brightly in his cheeks.

"Watch that tone, boy," Stephen commanded.  In his own ears, he merely sounded faintly displeased, but he watched his elder son, who had crouched down in front of the wood pile for whatever reason, flinch involuntarily.

"I'm sorry, m'lord, I didn't mean to say that," the younger son managed.  It sounded as though he'd been punched in the throat.

"You absolutely did mean to say that," Iona corrected.

"But not... not like that," Sly breathed. He made a very small, very uncomfortable noise- a low pop of sound that instantly gave Saul second hand embarrassment.  "Sorry, Papa."

Stephen watched his elder son come down from a crouch to a kneel.  The coldness that he so hated stole through his inward self, and he crossed his arms over his chest.  Nearly immediately, he felt an all-too-familiar irritation in his fingers.

This.  This is.  All it is.  This fucking itch.

He willed himself not to tap them on his upper arms.

"Stephen?" Iona asked, the silence sounding far more unfamiliar to him than it did to either of the children in the room.

Saul bit his tongue to keep himself from shushing his uncle.

"Answer me, Sylvester," Stephen rumbled, uncrossing his tingling arms and moving toward the collection of metal ingots.  He selected a few steel ones to look over, moving each one with both hands despite how light they normally were to him.  "Why did you bring your Uncle Iona all the way down to the shop to ask me where the good map was?"

"I... I don't know," Sly said falteringly, watching the slow, purposeful movement of his father with misplaced dread.  Blood fled from his face, and he felt dizzy.  "Since it's his letter, I guess?  But I could have wait-"

"Letter?" Stephen interrupted, mentally grabbing hold of the one active word.  "What letter needs going to some western post?"

"I didn't tell him of the contents," Iona answered.  "If you're going to demand answers, at least demand them from the correct person."

"If a peasant asked you to answer their lord or a tax collector in writing, who would be called to account, the peasant, or the man of letters?" Stephen asked, standing straight to look at Iona and Sly.

"You might trust your brother and your son a bit more than an unlearned peasant," Iona argued.  "If you must know, it's my intent to counsel Adassa to come home, as I imagine you haven't tried to do so yourself."

Saul, who had finally managed to wash the sap out of his eyes by yawning his tear ducts into action, wondered why his uncle hadn't simply waited until his father had come up for lunch.

"Of course I 'must' know that.  Of all possible messages to leave your quill, I should definitely know about that," Stephen countered with vicious speed, abandoning all outward show in favor of glaring at his brother.  "Coming here wouldn't do Dass any good.  The woman is-"

"A pirate, thanks in part to continued negligence," Iona interrupted sharply.

"That's no business of yours," Stephen growled.  "Dass should have been permitted to join the Blue Dragons when the chance was given.  I wasn't Papa Raibeart then, but I am now, and I've chosen to allow her to live as free of a life as she can.  If you think that's neglect, so be it.  Go down to the Pillars and put in a lawsuit; they seem to be of a mind to hear any case these days.  You'll have your chance to run the family either when I'm dead, or when some wizard declares me sufficiently mad."

Sly looked everywhere in the shop but at his father.

Iona made a soft, but pained sound, rather similar in tone and nature to what Sly had uttered some time before.

And at last Saul chose some wood from the pile.  He stood up and turned around slowly.

"Will this do, m'lord?"

Stephen looked icily at the boy in the corner.  "What?"

"This wood- will it do as the-"

The commissioned blacksmith blinked, took a few deep breaths, and then sighed wearily.  "That's... my fault."

Saul's eyes became saucers immediately, but his own 'what?' never left his tongue.

"I know I told you that the harder wood costs more, but continuing to use the softer ones as though they were all I had is why your arrows kept breaking, and-"

And Saul simply sat down on his behind, crossing his legs beneath him.  "I'm sorry."

"I-" Stephen began.  Within himself, the cold absence of his inner self frustrated and scared him at the same time.  The single vowel hung in the air for an intolerable length of time. 

"I'm sorry, Papa," Saul repeated.  "I'll put this back."

"It'll do for a bow," Stephen breathed, both annoyed and relieved at his first son purposefully letting him off the hook.  "Set it to the side to deal with when Uncle Iordyn gets back.  Whatever he tells you, even if it's different to how I taught you, try it.  The bow he has now, he had to make himself as part of his training, and you've seen how good it is."

"Yes, Papa; I will."

Stephen nodded, but a twinge of guilt bit deeply into his heart.  "Good enough, son."

Sly ambled over to his brother and looked down at the wood in his lap.

"How do you tell the difference?" he said, his voice low and small.  He looked beyond his brother to the stacked wood near the back wall.  "It all looks the same to me."

"Couldn't pay me to know the difference between an 'N' and an 'M'," Saul replied as he got up to do as he was told.

"The lower cases of 'P', 'Q', and 'G' are all pretty similar too," Sly confided, turning back around to focus on the wood, shoulder to shoulder with his brother.  "I didn't even realize that telling them apart might be difficult, until trying to teach them to Ser Alex."

"This is yew," Saul started.  "It's light, and it can-"

"Tell him that later," Stephen said.  "Right now, he's got to answer for this letter writing business of his."

"Yes, m'lord," Saul replied carefully.  Sly sighed, turned back around, and walked back toward Iona.

"Good enough."  Stephen watched his younger son amble to his uncle's side.  "Come on, come over here.  Mind the robes and tunics near the fire as you're coming."

Sly gently picked up Iona's left hand and put it on his right shoulder, allowing himself to wordlessly serve as a guide animal until both of them had gotten to Stephen's work table.  Once they had, Stephen leaned over it a bit, as though preparing to privately conspire with the two of them.

"I know the western ports well enough, Iona.  That island you were on when you actually saw Dassy- where was that?"

"That was Paldir," Iona replied quietly.  "But that was nearly a year ago now."

"Ron and Reece have just written that they've been working madly since ice breaking," Stephen sighed.  "Dass can't afford to sit still if the Blue Dragons are stirred up."

"So... is Aunt Dass a pirate for real?" Sly asked carefully.

"Yes," Iona stated.

"No," Stephen replied, his answer overlapping with his brother's.  "What she's doing isn't legal, but-"

"Don't try justifying wrongdoing, especially not to anyone at so impressionable of an age," Iona admonished, raising what would have been an eyebrow if it had any hair remaining.

"I just said she wasn't keeping the law," Stephen argued.  "But you wrote me yourself that she dropped good coin to rebuild a town that was burned, and to reestablish a financially unstable monastery.  Pirates don't do that.  Mercenaries might.  An honorable merc might put a wicked man to the sword, then make sure his widow and kids had food on their table.  That sounds more like the Dassy you saw in that pub, doesn't it?"

"Any mercenary, honorable or not, is still just as much aback of the law as any pirate," Iona huffed.  "Bear you in mind that if Aaron caught up with whatever ship she's on-"

"Did she tell you what cargo her people tend to carry?" Stephen interrupted, pushing the possible outcomes of a standoff between his law abiding younger brother and law avoiding younger sister out of his mind.  "Spices?  Fabrics?  Tools?  Foods?"

Iona gave a short, sharp laugh.  "She said it'd be better if I didn't know.  Wouldn't even tell me about her captain, or her ship.  I couldn't tell it apart from any other even if I could see it."

Stephen gave a single raw snort.  "Sparing your sacrosanct sensibilities.  Hadn't forgotten that it's better not to let you even smell any possible sin."

"If I ask a few friends, I might be able to find out which eastern nations, other than Sembia, might deal with contraband," Sly offered.  "Then, with a physical description of her, we might get some details about what ship and captain she might be serving."

"You ought rather immediately quit the company of anyone who could speak with authority on such a topic," Iona immediately demanded.

"See what I mean?" Stephen asked simply.  "Try to think better of your Aunt Dass.  She might be shipping items that must be kept secret for the good of the buyer, not because they're illegal, but because they might cause public alarm if they were known.  Just think of how people might react to know that sheep's tongue and bat's wings aren't simply artfully named plants."

In the corner, Saul made a noise of disgust despite himself, but Sly merely smirked.

"I understand what you mean, Papa.  Saul, they're for alchemics; no one eats them.  Or... at least not whole."

"Still gross," Saul called back.

Stephen looked over at his dawdling apprentice.  "Saul, if the wood pile is that disorganized, you may as well resort it, rather than standing there just looking at it."

"Yes, m'lord," Saul sighed.  He began moving pieces of wood around just to look busy at first, but rapidly realized that the pile really had gotten out of hand.

"No righteous deed is done in the dark," Iona stated.

"No one says prayers before bedtime in the monasteries of Tyr?" Stephen teased.  "Or do you all sleep in the day, like zombies, vampires, and werewolves do?"

"Making babies gets done in the dark, most of the time," Sly responded quietly.  Both older men speared him through with their undivided attentions right away, but he continued, undaunted.  "Well, it does, and it makes no sense that priests bless the marriage and the babies themselves while calling the making and getting of those babies unrighteous."

Stephen considered Sly first, then chuckled, then outright laughed.  "I didn't particularly need more proof that you were my child, but I suppose I don't mind hearing the thoughts I had at your age come out of your mouth.  Swear to me, right here and now, that if you sire a child, or even suspect that you have, you'll come home and tell me.  That's both of you, eh, Saul?  You come home, you tell me, and we can take in whatever girl you've knocked up so that we can treat her like the wife she'll be to you, you hear me?"

"Yes, ser," Saul said as he came upon a piece of wood that he liked.  He quickly turned around with it in his hand and held it up.  "Is this good?"

Stephen's revived inner self laughed at the fact that his eldest son was more concerned with his work than with the proposition of having a child out of wedlock.  "That'll do; set that aside with the wood for the bow and get back to sorting.  Sly?"

Sly rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, then looked at his father with the barest flicker of worry in his eyes.  "You won't get angry at her or me, will you?"

Stephen hummed in consideration.

The commissioned blacksmith's thick, heavy rumbling seemed right to Saul.  More full, more genuine.  The pressure on the man's inward stress crack had somehow been relieved, and Saul wished he could ask every god how to keep it that way all the time.

Behind him, the forge momentarily lost some heat.  Neither Sly nor Stephen even noticed.  Iona turned his sightless eyes toward it, having felt some sort of unusual coolness, but since no one who normally occupied the shop commented on it, rapidly dismissed the sensation as normal.

"If I were to be angry at anyone," Stephen mused, "it'd be at myself, for causing you to feel that you had to sneak around to take your pleasure in secret.  I'd be embarrassed before others, and angry entirely at myself, sure, but I'd feel no cross thing at all for the pair of you."

"I almost feel as though I oughtn't be hearing this," Iona commented, refocusing his attentions on his elder brother.

"You live in a world of ideals, with no children at all, let alone boy children," Stephen shrugged, glancing first at his forge, then looking back to Iona and Sly.  "I and my wife live in a world where a boy lays eyes on a beautiful girl, and his loins burn him until he takes her, whether she belongs to him or not."

Saul pinched his lips between his teeth, but still made puffing sounds that indicated that he wanted to laugh.  Sly's cheeks burned radiantly red.

"Both of those worlds have the same moral code," Iona argued.  "Unwedded persons are not to be carrying on as though their physical union were a blessed one.  To live a life led by uncontrolled cravings is to live the miserable life of an unwashed mountain person."

"The existence of sufficient hired help to draw and heat bath water is one of the few real differences between an unwashed mountain person and a heartland Cormyrean," Stephen retorted.  "Remember, I took Suze and my very much stolen inheritance, and bought this bit of land here because I had to, or my first child would have been a bastard indeed.  If either of my boys brought me a girl in the same way that I brought Suze before our parents years ago, and I offered them no safe haven, wouldn't you have to judge me a hypocrite, just as much as you judged our parents not two or three weeks gone?"

There was a moment of silence.

"I wonder what you would think of one of your daughters being stolen into the family of another in such a way," Iona said in a wickedly sarcastic tone.  "And I still strongly urge these young boys to be married before partaking in the types of activities that may produce children."

"For gods' sakes, Iona- I've tried to raise all my children to be responsible," Stephen muttered, rubbing his hand up his forehead and over the top of his head in a way that was usually reserved for sweat having recently dripped into his eyes.  "Please promise me what I asked of you, Sylvester."

Sly swallowed hard.  "Yes, m'lord, I'll... I'll tell you."

Stephen mentally filed away the incredible possibility that Sly might be more likely to get physically familiar with a girl than Saul.  "Good enough.  Now, these interesting friends of yours- I suppose they hang around the docks often?"

"Yes; most of them are Blue Dragon messengers," Sly replied.

"Ah, that lot.  No wonder they can tell the kinds of tales you were talking about," Stephen scoffed.  "A wonder they haven't taught you to curse and gamble too."

The redness that blossomed anew in Sly's cheeks left exactly no room for mistake, so Stephen simply avoided asking anything that his younger son would feel compelled to lie about.

"As I said before, I sent a few letters, and from time to time, I would receive objects and foods whose sender paid the messenger well not to tell me who they were.  That hammer there is one of them."

Stephen jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward a hammer that had been mounted on a wooden plaque and hung outside the shop.

"I didn't think that was real," Sly admitted.

"It is, and it's of finer quality than any of the ones in here," Stephen admitted.  "While I've had my suspicions, I've never been sure that my mystery sender is Dass.  Now, remember, Father Firehammer, when you commissioned me to make a two handed sword?"

"I do, Papa Raibeart," Iona said, his voice dry.

Stephen huffed briefly, then continued.  "Did you tell Dass you'd have one made?"

"I did not, but... she might suspect," Iona admitted.  "That skull.  She was quite proud of it, but it irked my spirit to look upon it.  I asked her to do away with the weapon, to buy another, and she laughed that she wouldn't easily find one of such quality just anywhere.  As you of all people know, I can't tell one sword apart from any other, and so could press my request no further."

Stephen thought for a few moments, considering why Adassa might take such pride in a piece  "I've seen a style I'm sure that I can imitate, and when I do, I'll make sure that piece is just as irksome to look at as the one she's got.  Usually, I put my seal on pieces, but this one, I won't."

"I don't see the sense of that," Iona admitted.  "The seal would identify you as the craftsman, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, which I don't want," Stephen replied.  "I'll carve her name where mine should be, and she'll have a choice."

"She can bring it back," Sly smirked hopefully.

"That'd be the best of all worlds, yes, but unlikely," Stephen chuckled sadly.

Saul finished sorting the wood in the corner and began busying himself with pulling out the various splinters he'd sustained in the process.  Upstairs, the scrabble of dog nails on patches of bare wood made itself heard.  Susanna's voice burbled pleasantly down to the smithy, filling her husband's chest with rose scented heat.

"That'll be your mother and Uncle Iordyn," Stephen said, looking up as though he would see anything more than the beams that helped to keep the first floor of his home from making an unwanted appearance in his shop.  "Go on upstairs and tell your uncle about the bow you two will be making."

"Yes, m'lord," Saul replied, still picking at his fingers.  He very slowly made his way to the steps and began to climb them without looking up.  Stephen watched, but didn't admonish him.

"The last letter I sent was just after all the business at the Pillars, and included that news," Stephen noted.  "I expect that one of your messenger friends will again receive some sort of gift for me whose sender doesn't want to be known.  When that happens, you'll put the sword I make for Dass in that messenger's hands and tell him or her that it's to go to wherever that gift came from."

"If I may ask, where have you been sending your letters?" Iona interjected.  "Should we not simply send the weapon with it?"

"I'm not knowingly sending any weapon I've put my hands on to the same place I've been sending the letters," Stephen answered firmly, "and that's all I'm going to say about that."

"I've already written this letter," Iona reasoned.  "If you direct me, I'll-"

"First of all, give that to me, Sly.  Second, I do not want Adassa coming home; you can't tell her I want that, because I don't."

"We've been beyond fortunate so far, to have both myself and Iordyn so narrowly escape death, but we might not continue to be so blessed.  You have a responsibility to-"

"I said no.  If she brings me a man and says, 'This one,' then I'll gladly take them to the priests and make marriage arrangements for them both.  But until then, I have exactly zero desire to enact paternal authority over her, and if I find out that you're trying to do it for me, I will write to your order and demand you back."

"No one would agree to that," Iona laughed.

"Of course not, because such a demand would be ridiculous," Stephen nodded.  "And so would be trying to get a seasoned sailor out of a lucrative position by parental rights.  I don't think a single man on her ship will help me enforce said rights; do you?"

Sly dug into the tube shaped leather purse that was slung over his shoulder and produced Iona's letter.  "Here, Papa."

There was a beat of silence.

"Take it," Iona relented.  "I still don't agree with you, but I won't try to get around you.  And I have 'exactly zero desire' to make your ability to manage our family a matter for the Pillars."

"At least not now," Stephen huffed.

Another, longer beat of silence.

"At least not now," Iona admitted.  "Not for a long time, I hope."

Stephen scoffed gently to himself and took the letter out of Sly's waiting hand.