CHAPTER 77: 77: A NEW BEGINNING PART II

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John crossed to the cooper to borrow two extra barrels and paid with coin and a favor to be named later. He stopped at the brewer on the east lane, who had a face like a cheerful pumpkin, and bought a pair of quarter casks of something amber that smelled like patience and trouble. He returned by way of the seamstress, who had a bolt of cheap linen for makeshift banners and one narrow strip of bright cloth that Fizz, later, would demand be made into a "formal napkin."

Back at the forge, the work turned joyful. The main table became a batter station. Jem and Jerr cracked eggs with thumps that reverberated in their arms, poured milk from a tall earthen pitcher, and sifted flour through their fingers like snow. Fizz hovered over the bowl and announced each stage as if calling a ceremony.

"Eggs for courage. Milk for kindness. Flour for consistency. Salt so we don’t forget to be interesting. Sugar for personality. Stir. Stir more. Stir like you mean it. Not like that, Jem, you’re proposing to the batter, not trying to start a fight — ah, that’s better. I have never seen such a handsome bowl of the future."

On the far side of the yard, Gael erected a simple grill from two bricks and a grate, his hands tender with experience. He rubbed the pork with rosemary, garlic, and a merchant’s pepper whose price had made him squint. He salted as if he were blessing the meat. When the first slabs met the flame, the smell rose like a parade.

Ludo oversaw the fires with the patience of a man who could read heat like words. He built a pancake fire — low, broad, steady, so the pans wouldn’t pout—and a meat fire — hot with pauses. He checked coals with a poker and a squint. He nodded when they obeyed.

Children wandered by with wide eyes and secret hopes. An old woman in a blue shawl paused and sniffed with professional respect. Two village guards on the gate pretended not to stare and failed.

Fizz buzzed between stations with managerial fervor. He tasted batter ("Acceptably sweet. We can mend that with honey."), sniffed beer ("Full of potential and regrets."), and offered Gael unsolicited notes ("More rosemary. Yes. Trust me. My nose is licensed.").

"Who licensed your nose, Lord Fizz?" Orna called, flipping the first pancake with a wrist that had felled trees.

"I did," Fizz said. "Top of the class. Only student, Very prestigious."

By noon the line of pans was alive. Ladles dipped, batter hissed, edges bubbled, and the flip —a happy moment— came in rhythm. Orna taught Harn to watch the shine go dull before the turn. Jem learned to count his quiet ones instead of staring. Jerr discovered his exact ladle was the difference between a respectable circle and a tragic amoeba.

Fizz kept a running commentary and occasionally tried to enliven the flipping with drumrolls made by tapping two spoons together. Ruel carved small chalk lines on a board propped against the wall. Each time a plate disappeared into Fizz Belly, he made a mark. By the time the first dozen marks glowed in the sun, the muttering began.

"Fourteen."

"Twentyyyy... one."

"Thirty three? No. That cannot be right. He’s hiding them."

Fizz patted his midsection. "Hollow legs. Possibly hollow everything. Science refuses to engage with me."

"What is science," Jem asked, suspicious, as if it were a type of cabbage.

"An argument with numbers and theory," Fizz said wisely, and opened his mouth for another pancake.

Beer arrived in clay mugs, wiped with linen, capped with foam. Kel and Doff ran the taps with earnest care, perfecting the angle that made the head sit well. Someone produced a fiddle; someone else found a drum. A rhythm grown in the mines found a new beat over open air.

John walked the perimeter, not as a guard but as a host. He spoke to the old woman in the blue shawl, who said she remembered a girl version of him when she was smaller; she looked just like John, surrounded by men who weren’t kind. He took the compliment and the caution together and filed them where such things lived. He traded a joke with the gate guards that left them less stiff. He stopped children from daring each other to touch the grill. He told Ruel to drink water between mugs because he liked his workers vertically.

Every so often he stopped on the threshold, looked in at the men he had gathered, and let the sight arrange his heart. They had been rocks in the dark once. Now they were people in the light, and much of that difference had to do with a small creature doing laps with a plate over his head and calling it leadership.

"Speech," someone yelled, because that always happens when mugs are happy.

John lifted his hand. "No speech," he said. "Only this: you’ve worked hard at hard things. Today we work at an easy thing and do it well. Eat. Drink. Keep your fingers out of the hot oil. And if Fizz explodes, I get first dibs on the confetti."

Fizz spun midair with a fork and forked two pancakes into his mouth at once. "Rude," he said around them, and the forge cheered.

The sun leaned west. Heat softened into warmth. The smell of pork drifted into the lane and came back with half the street attached to it. That was when Sera returned, and she did not return alone. (She left in the morning.)

Elara came first, armor catching the light like a large, polite threat. She wore discipline like a cloak and carried her sword as simply as one carries a spoon. Her gaze moved across the yard and found every exit. It moved across John and found, for the moment, nothing she liked.

Behind her walked the man from last night, cloak clasped, face arranged like furniture in a formal room. He had thirty years in his bones and none of them interested in being anyone else. The temple’s iron symbol sat at his collar like a permanent finger wag.