Free Iron Kin: A Novel of the Half-Light City by M.J. Scott Page A

don’t handle it directly.”
    I wondered if he was telling the truth, then decided I didn’t care. If he wanted to be an idiot, it wasn’t my place to stop him. I stepped farther back as he moved toward me. He might be an idiot but I wasn’t going to be one.
    Scooping up the hammer, I moved across the workroom, back to the forge to return the tool to its proper place, putting a good chunk of metal between me and the man who had me rattled in the process.
    Fen, however, came to a halt a few feet inside the door, his head turning every which way, his expression fascinated.
    “You had something you wanted?” I prompted. I didn’t want to deal with this man while I was shaken and off balance. What I wanted was to be left alone to regain my composure. Because I was suddenly afraid that I might attempt to work off my anger by doing something foolish with him.
    I wiped my hands on my apron, succeeding only in smearing more soot on skin and leather. Turning my back on Fen, I crossed to the sink at the rear of the room, untying the apron as I went. Scrubbing my hands gave me a minute to think. I would’ve dunked my head in the water if I’d thought it would help but I doubted it would. Besides, I didn’t want Fen to see my nerves.
    I dried my hands slowly. Behind me, Fen moved around the room, his footsteps light, then silent as he paused here and there. At least there was no crash of glass or clatter of metal. Or maybe that wasn’t a good thing. Knocking something over would give me the excuse to toss him out again.
    With one last nervous swipe of the linen towel over my hands, I forced myself to turn back to him.
    “Are you going to tell me why you’re here?” I came halfway back across the room, still keeping a reasonable distance between us. The Guild didn’t apply the silly rules of chaperonage and etiquette that the human world imposed—it would make teaching students difficult if unmarried men and women couldn’t be left alone together—but for once I missed the protection of the system I’d grown up with.
    Fen moved—prowled, rather—around my room, looking somewhat like a wild thing hunting for . . . what exactly, I couldn’t tell.
    He paused near the forge, stared down at the flames. He still didn’t speak.
    I frowned, anger rekindling slowly now that I’d had a chance to steady my nerves. “I’m really quite busy this morning. If you’re not going to tell me why you’re here, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Do you want something?”
    His head lifted sharply, and those wild green eyes settled on me, narrowing slightly. “Such as?”
    “I don’t know. You came to me,” I pointed out.
    “And men never come to you just because?” His voice dropped a note or too, pitched just right to please the ear.
    “Not very often.” I pressed my lips together, swallowed against the sudden resurging flutter of nerves. “After all, they know who my brothers are.” I angled a few steps toward the box under the window where I kept the weapons I made. I didn’t truly believe I needed one, and I did have other tools of defense at my disposal, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Simon and Guy had drummed that much into me.
    “Your brothers aren’t that scary.”
    “Maybe not to you.” Once again, I wondered if he was telling the truth. Usually I was very good at reading people. Fen, if he was lying, was a master at it. All the more reason to treat him with caution.
    I’d seen him head out of the ballroom with Simon and Guy last night and seen him return, looking grim, before he’d pasted a polite look of indifference back on his face and stationed himself, back to the bar, watching the dancers while he drank. “But most men I meet have more sense”—
and less brandy,
I stopped myself from adding by clamping my mouth shut on the words and swallowing again—“than you.”
    “You don’t know if I have any sense or not.”
    “I’ve heard stories,” I said. Then cursed myself as the