A Promise of Iron by Brandon McCoy (the reading list .txt) 📕

“Would you like me to verify its purity?” she asked aloud.

A chuckle passed my guard. “But of course.”

She set a small piece of parchment next to the sword. It was then that I noticed she had a few vials of testing solution stacked on her counter next to her sealing wax. I had seen her use the vials before to verify purity content, but always under the careful supervision of one of the crows. Were the auditors so overwhelmed that they had her performing alchemical testing alone?

She placed a hand on the bottle marked with a silver lid and unscrewed the cap. She then held the cap over the middle of the blade and let several drops fall from the thin strip of silver connected to the lid. She waited a few moments, then took the piece of parchment and pressed it over the drops. She moved the paper, which I recognized as a purity card, back and forth over the blade.

When she placed the card back on the counter, I looked with anticipation only to find a dark green spot stamped on the purity card. She grinned, obviously pleased with herself.

I was even more confused now than I had been at the start. I didn’t know the official purity gradients for silver, but I knew the darker the spot, the lower the percentage. Based on what I had seen in other transactions, I guessed the blade was no more than fifty percent silver.

I frowned.

It was common for blades to have a lower purity rating than coin; most were made of alloys. But this monstrosity of silver, clearly made by touched hands, didn’t even carry the pedigree of its namesake. What was the purpose of showing me a decorative silver blade only to prove it was not silver?

Deftly, she grabbed the card and slid it between the waistband of her pants and her hip. I smiled: first in recognizing my tutelage in the sleight of hand, second for the brief glimpse of exposed flesh. With the same motion, she pulled free another card that was concealed in its place. She placed this new card on the counter next to the sword. I looked down at it. This purity card held a far different outcome; the watermark was almost clear, confirming perhaps an eighty to ninety percent purity.

I felt sweat form on my forehead. A counterfeit scheme was one of the most common ways to defraud the Empire. I knew this based on the corpses that piled up every few weeks at the execution square. It was so common it had almost become uncommon, the Imps knew what to look for, how to spot it, hells that’s why they were so suspicious of familiar transactions. No one with any sense would try and run that game now; it was relegated to those genuinely desperate.

Was she trying to run a counterfeit scheme here? If so, she had the whole thing backward. You can’t prove that a blade is of inferior purity, then try and get me to pay above its value.

She was still smiling, pleased as pie as if she had thought herself the most clever person in all the Empire.

I thought to end it outright and just ask her when I caught her eyes. She was trying to tell me something. I followed her gaze to the base of the blade, where it met the crossguard. It was made from the same metal as the blade but only a half-inch thick as it curved upward and out away from the handle. The blade was nearly three feet in length, a two-handed weapon for a Cyllian, but for someone of my size, more a hand and a half sword. Most swords made in the past half-century were shorter and almost identical in length, keeping to the preferred Cyllian dimensions. This sword must have been old, from long before the wars. I admired its craft. Despite its purposeless existence, its maker had seen it born with great detail. It was elegant in design and a touch reminiscent of an Illyrian tall sword. She knew I was fascinated with history, but no love of history would have me drop my purse on a worthless…

Then I saw it, right above the crossguard, a spot unblemished by the gray tarnish that marred the rest of the weapon. That spot, less the size of a silver noble, must have been protected while the rest of the blade was exposed to the elements that caused its decay. It looked silver, but with a noticeable blue hue that seemed illuminated by the light from the oculus above.

I gasped.

Lira put her finger to her lips once more. She gave me a knowing look, one that I finally reflected. This was not a silver weapon or some alloy of nickel or otherwise, this was something thousands of times more precious.

“Where did you get this?” I whispered.

She leaned in closer. “A mining guild brought it in first thing this morning. They dug up a barrow in Belen Heights, near the old ruins. They had some other odds and ends, but they set to selling this straight away.”

I puzzled at the thought. “Why would they sell this? Didn’t they know what they had?”

“Obviously not,” she whispered. “This sword is your people’s birthright, and look how long it took you to figure it out.”

She tsked. “And you call yourself a blacksmith!”

“How did you figure...?”

“When they brought it in, I took it to the back to see if I could clean a spot to do a proper purity test. I managed to chip away a piece of hard clay that had bonded to the blade. When I did, I saw the blue underneath right away.”

I nodded. “So how did you...?”

“They were so drunk that they didn’t see me test the blade card for copper. They must have been celebrating while they waited for us to open. A silver solution will produce a neutral