The dead spirit’s eye rolled hard enough to knock its jar against the counter just as Orris drove a pin through the shield’s split binding. He stopped with the pin halfway in.
“Hold still,” he told the eye.
It fixed its clouded gaze on the front door.
Orris looked at the door. The latch was down. The shop bell hung quiet above it. Outside, morning traffic went along the lane in the usual clatter of cart wheels and boots.
He pushed the pin the rest of the way through the shield. The leather binding tightened with a small, satisfying creak. The shield was an ordinary one, oak boards under a skin of iron, and its owner had asked for a repair that would survive a week of bad weather and worse decisions. Orris could do that.
The eye tapped the glass again.
“You have a warm shelf and a view,” Orris said. “You don’t get to complain about the company.”
The eye’s inner voice was a thin, frightened ringing. It was not a word. The dead had never been much help with words.
Orris set down his awl. He could feel the eye’s warning in the jar’s faint vibration, though there was nothing at the door to see. The shop was full of small noises: the kettle ticking by the hearth, the old boards settling, the shield’s leather giving off its sour smell. The eye rang through all of them.
The bell rang.
Orris reached for the latch. Harrow Venn stepped inside, a broad figure in road-dulled armor. His helmet was tucked under one arm. Above the collar, the neat waxed seam at the top of his neck was exposed, its pale stitching interrupted by a dark line that ran into the armor.
The eye in the jar went still.
Harrow shut the door behind him. “Good morning, Orris. I require attention to the collar and the seam beneath it. Something has followed me from the Rift.”
Orris glanced at the eye. “That appears to be what it was trying to say.”
“I am sorry to have brought it near your shop.”
“Let’s see what you brought.” Orris moved the shield aside. “Did you feel it catch?”
“On the last mile. A tug at the back of the neck. I thought a strap had slipped.” Harrow placed his helmet on the bench. “The strap is sound.”
“Does the seam hurt?”
“No.” Harrow paused. “It is cold.”
Orris pulled a chair away from the workbench. “Sit. Keep both hands on your knees until I ask otherwise.”
Harrow sat, armor plates shifting with a dry clink. The missing head left no face to study, but his gauntleted hands came to rest exactly where Orris had asked. Harrow was careful even when the danger was his own.
Next
With Harrow still at the threshold and the sealed hook scraping toward the workshop door, can Orris keep it contained without letting it find its way back to Harrow?
Orris lit the narrow work lamp and leaned close to the collar. The pale neck seam was intact. The stitching had been done well, with even tension and no frayed ends. Just beneath the back edge of the armor, however, something dark had slipped between the collar lining and the seam.
Orris could not see its whole shape. He felt it instead: a sharp, cold pressure, like a needle pushed from the wrong side of a piece of cloth. The armor’s calmness was low, its metal holding a stubborn, defensive anger. Beneath that, the hidden thing pressed and pressed.
A voice scraped through his hearing. Let me in. Let me in. Let me—
The words came from the thing under the collar. They carried no useful explanation, only insistence.
“Is it speaking?” Harrow asked.
“Something is trying to.” Orris reached for a thin wooden probe. “I need to see how it’s caught. Don’t turn.”
Harrow’s fingers tightened once against his knees. “Understood.”
Orris eased the probe between metal and lining. The dark pressure recoiled, then hooked itself around the tip. Its voice rose into a shrill, crowded sound. Orris pulled back before it could drag the probe deeper.
The eye jar shuddered on the counter.
“That’s enough,” Orris said. He withdrew the tool. “It’s barbed. I’ll need to loosen the collar without letting the hook bite into the seam.”
“What will that take?”
“A few minutes if it cooperates. Longer if it doesn’t.”
Harrow reached toward his collar.
Orris caught his wrist. “Keep your hands where they are.”
The movement stopped. Harrow’s armor gave a faint metallic rasp as he lowered his hand. “You have my apologies.”
“Save them for after.” Orris let go. “I need your shield.”
Harrow had brought a round shield strapped across his back. Orris unbuckled it and laid it flat on the bench, where the wood could support the collar as he worked. He slid the repaired ordinary shield farther away. Its owner’s cracked binding had looked like a simple job. Now the shield sat between a customer’s small problem and a stranger’s larger one, waiting its turn.
Orris pulled a shallow tray from beneath the bench. Salt, a soft brass clamp, a length of waxed linen, and a small jar of clear resin went into it. The resin was normally used to settle metal that had taken too much force. It would not destroy the thing in the collar. Nothing he could do would destroy it. He could give it a quieter direction to go.
First, he warmed the brass clamp over the lamp. Then he set it along the collar’s edge, using the shield as a brace and the linen to keep the metal from pinching the neck seam. The clamp took the strain without squeezing. Orris watched the dark line in the gap. It twitched toward the exposed stitching.
“Do you feel that?” Orris asked.
“Yes.” Harrow’s voice remained even. “It is pulling at the seam now.”
“Tell me if it changes.”
The hook pressed harder. The collar shifted by a fraction. Harrow’s shoulders drew tight, but his hands stayed on his knees.
Orris kept one hand on the clamp. With the other, he worked salt into the lining, grain by grain. The voice sharpened at every pinch of salt. He let it spend its force against the brass, then waited for the metal to settle before adding more.
The shop’s warmth reached his knuckles. The eye’s jar ticked in time with the kettle. Orris kept his attention on the little changes: a shiver in the hook, the clamp’s first softening, the place where the waxed linen pulled too hard against the seam. Each adjustment had to be small. A rushed turn could strip the thread or send the barb through the lining and into Harrow.
“Something is pulling from behind,” Harrow said.
Orris pressed his thumb against the clamp. “I know.”
The collar tightened. For a moment Orris felt the force run through the shield and into the bench. A plank complained. The hook’s voice filled his hearing with the sound of a door being dragged over stone.
Harrow’s right hand rose from his knee.
“Stay with me,” Orris said. “If you move, it gets the seam.”
The hand hovered. Harrow’s fingers curled, then opened. He lowered it again, slowly, as if placing something fragile on a shelf.
Orris turned the clamp a hair’s breadth. The pressure loosened. He placed a narrow strip of waxed linen between the hook and the seam, giving the barbed thing something else to catch. The hook seized it at once.
“Now,” Orris said. “On my count, lean forward. Not away from me. Forward.”
Harrow nodded once.
Orris counted three and drew the linen strip toward the collar’s open edge. Harrow leaned forward. The hook came with it, fighting the whole way. Its dark length showed at last, no thicker than a knitting needle, bent into a tight curve and barbed at both ends. It was not metal. It had the sheen of old bone left in rain.
The neck seam pulled taut.
Orris stopped. The hook’s outer barb had caught a stitch.
Harrow’s hand closed around the edge of the workbench. The wood creaked beneath his gauntlet. “The seam is holding.”
“I can see that.” Orris did not look away from the thread. “Hold the bench, then. It’s helping.”
He took a fine pair of shears from the tray. The hook gave a sudden jerk, sharp enough to make the clamp jump. The jarred eye struck glass against wood. Its warning rang through Orris’s teeth.
Orris set the shears at the trapped stitch. He could cut it and sew it again, but the hook might drag the loose end deeper. Instead, he dipped the shears’ tips into the resin and slid them under the barb. He waited for the hook to pull against the tacky surface.
It caught.
Orris turned the shears. The resin held the barb long enough for him to ease it free of the stitch. Then he drew the whole hook out in one slow pull.
The sound in his head stopped.
Harrow stayed folded over the bench, fingers still gripping the wood. The collar settled. A single line of blood welled along the back of the seam, then stopped there, held by the waxed stitching.
Orris laid the hook in the salt tray. It curled into itself, trembling faintly.
For several seconds, neither of them moved. Orris waited until Harrow’s grip eased before he reached for the seam. He cleaned the blood with a damp cloth and checked each stitch. One had stretched. The rest remained sound.
“I can mend that,” he said. “The collar needs a new lining as well. The hook’s left a groove.”
“Will the seam hold until then?”
“Yes.”
Harrow released the bench. His gauntlet had left a shallow dent in the wood. He touched the back of his neck with two fingers, stopping just short of the seam. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll finish the collar today.”
Orris poured more salt over the hook and watched it settle. He wrapped the entire tray in lead cloth, tied it shut, and carried it down the narrow stairs to the sealed workshop beneath the shop. The lead-lined door closed behind him with a weighty click. When he came back upstairs, Harrow was still seated. He had not touched his helmet.
Orris poured him a cup of water. Harrow took it in both hands, though the metal gloves made the gesture awkward.
“You said it followed you,” Orris said. “Did you see anything on the road?”
“Nothing I could name. Twice, I heard the sound of a hook drawing along stone.” Harrow set the cup down. “I assumed it came from my armor.”
“Could have.” Orris picked up the collar. “It was attached to the inside.”
“I will return for the fitting.”
“Come before the afternoon rush. I’ll have the lining ready.”
The bell rang again. Captain Malket Brine entered with a battered shield tucked under one arm. He looked at the bench, the salt tray, then Harrow’s uncovered neck seam.
“Bad morning?” he asked.
“Repairable,” Orris said.
Malket put his shield on the counter. Its surface was scarred from several impacts, and one strap had come loose. “This one needs its left binding replaced. The old leather’s going soft.”
“I’ll take it after Harrow’s collar.”
Malket’s gaze stayed on the seam. “Was it from the Rift?”
“It was.”
“Then I’d like it checked before he walks back through town.”
Harrow lifted his helmet. “The danger has been removed.”
Malket did not challenge him. He only shifted his shield away from the edge of the counter, making room for Orris’s tools. “I’ll wait for the repair, then.”
The captain’s faith in Orris’s work was a quiet thing, expressed in the shield he left behind and the way he did not ask what was under the floor. Orris felt the responsibility of it settle into the workday. He finished the collar lining with the same care he had given the seam: warm the metal, lay the linen flat, apply just enough resin, and wait for each layer to stop pulling before setting the next.
When the collar was ready, he fitted it back onto Harrow. The new lining sat close without pressing on the neck seam. Harrow tested the movement by turning his shoulders and raising each arm. The armor shifted cleanly.
“Better,” Harrow said.
Orris pressed a thumb along the collar’s edge. “No tug?”
“None.”
Harrow put on his helmet. He paused at the door, then looked back toward the bench where the dead spirit’s eye sat in its jar. “It saw the thing before I did.”
“It sees intruders.”
“Then it has earned its place.”
“It has a place. Earning it is a separate matter.”
Harrow’s shoulders gave a brief, silent shake that might have been a laugh. He opened the door.
At that moment, below the shop, something knocked once against the inside of the lead-lined box.
Orris heard it through the floorboards. Harrow stopped with one boot on the threshold.
A second knock came from below. The jarred eye turned toward the stairs.
Harrow took his foot off the threshold. “Was that the hook?”
Orris looked at the closed workshop door. The collar around Harrow’s neck remained still. “I sealed it in lead.”
The third knock came from the box. This time, it was followed by a scrape, slow and deliberate, dragging toward the door.
Harrow stood between the shop and the lane. Orris reached for the workshop key.