The day Savion Regenmace punched his nose so hard it broke was also the day Jan turned fifteen. When he got back to the smithy that afternoon, Luce took one look at his blood-crusted face and began to laugh. He didn't stop, either, until their father, who didn't believe in laughing, cuffed him on the ear and told him to get back to work. That was the day Luce turned fifteen, too, but Jan preferred to ignore his brother's claim to the day. 

At least they had gotten similar presents. A cuffed ear and a bloody nose. But Jan's left a more permanent mark on his face, and he never quite forgave Luce for it. Anyway, who's fault was it that he had even been in the Regenmace manor in time to get punched in the face, anyway? It was Luce who had been drafted to be Savion's sparring partner for his lessons. The problem was, Savion hadn't wanted a sparring partner. He'd wanted a punching bag. He'd wanted someone who would yell at him when he remarked how cow-like their older sister was looking. He'd wanted someone he could retaliate to by punching them in the face without being punished, because peasants weren't allowed to yell at their future lord like that.

But Luce would never take the bait. His comebacks were so snide and glib they left Savion trying to figure out whether or not he had been insulted, knowing instinctively he had but unable to prove it. If he hit Luce, Mistress Mersinda would punish him. 

So he had the only other peasant on the Regenmace lands who could use a sword replace Luce. Jan, who knew all weapons like the back of his soot-smoked hand, who defended himself without mercy, who called Savion a snot-nosed bastard, and subsequently got his own nose broken. 

He made every case he could for not going back but by mid-morning the next day he was hiking up to the manor with a scowl twisted permanently on his face.

The tenseness was almost physically palpable. Even the knock of the wooden staves against each other seemed to ring an unusually high pitch. Besides that there was little noise, just the rhythm of knocks and blocks dictated by Mersinda's even voice, her methodical pacing around the edge of the sandy rectangle where they practiced. "Hold it higher, Savion. Not so high, my lord. How do you expect to block if your fingers are in the way? I warned you, Savion. Hold it where I showed you before." All her instructions were directed to the blonde-haired boy with the sharply tilted mouth. Jan was, after all, only the punching bag.

Eyes lowered, Jan didn't bother to look at the older boy. The sun-burnt umber sand was grinded beneath the thin sole of his boots. He didn't need to watch his opponent. Mersinda's instructions were enough for him to know when to block, when to strike. Savion still hadn't passed into the stage of training when he would be allowed to decide his own moves. For now, Mersinda pounded into his head to pull the staff back quickly to block, to pivot to the side when striking for the stomach, to aim for the head to end the fight. Dictating his moves as she was, all Jan had to do was switch his staff's position to the corresponding stance-- at least until Savion broke from her instructions and smashed the staff into his shoulder.

It was hard enough, unexpected enough, painful enough to land him on his back in the sand, bones exploding in agony. His fists clenched, nails digging in and carving scarlet half-moons in soot-blackened skin as his face contorted and gasped, carrying with it a scream half-torn from his throat, wresting itself bit by agonizing bit out his mouth.

The fear that shot across Savion's face when he saw that tripled as Mersinda's furious glare bit deeper. "Get the healer," she told him, face frozen. And he dropped his staff and ran. 

On Jan's part, it was not as bad as he had thought, once he got over the pain. Broken bones weren't uncommon for him. But this hadn't been an accident, it had been pure spite. 

Some people thought Jan looked stupid, or at least dull. At any rate, certainly less clever than fine-boned, long-haired Luce, whose delicate features hadn't been made uncivilized even by years of working in the forge. But Jan was not stupid or dull, and if he was less clever it was only because he was less tactful. He did know what would probably happen if he tried what he was thinking of. He had simply decided it was worth the price.

Getting to the yard where Mersinda taught him, Savion was surprised in more than one way. The smith's son was there, despite his injured shoulder, when he had expected Mersinda to have excused him. And more than that-- the grubby boy was holding a dagger. His dagger, the one he'd received last Winter Solstice, with the bright iron blade and red leather-wrapped grip, set just above the pommel with a showy glass orb, the size of a marble, faceted like a jewel. It was, in fact, the closest thing to a jewel he owned, and it was attached to his most prized possession-- sitting snugly in the hand of that obnoxious boy.

Jan gave Savion's slow mind a long moment to recognize the weapon, before he began to spin it around, examining its sturdy cross-guard, handling it very carefully. Sunlight sang on its finely sharpened blade. 

"Give it back!" Savion screamed.

"Why?" Jan asked smugly. Savion had broken his nose and hurt his shoulder; they both knew Jan had no reason to give the dagger back.

The lord's son made a desperate grab for it but Jan was taller. Gripping it by the pommel, he held it up above his head. The glass jewel sparked gold and silver. "Take it," he taunted. "Take it yourself."

"Give it back-- give it back!" He howled.

"No."

"You have to!"

"Why?"

"Because!"

"Make me."

"Give it!"

"No."

"Do you want to be whipped?" It was one last desperate play for the dagger but at the look on Jan's face, Savion knew he's finally found his strategy. Standing back, he resumed his untouchable smirk, cool composure. "If you don't give it back, I'll have you whipped."

It seemed for a moment that Jan might not give in. His eyes were dark and angry. His shoulder still ached beneath its bandages.

But then his eyes fell, his good arm lowered. With one smooth movement he flipped the dagger so he held it by the blade, offering its grip to the lordling.

No one wanted to be whipped, and Savion knew it. His smirk stayed poised and untouchable as he held his hand just over the grip, as though testing if Jan would be stupid enough to change his mind. But his eyes had lost their fire, gone back to dull and blank brown, offering no resistance.

His fingers closed over the top of the grip, feeling the smooth, supple leather. His palm slowly settled into position on the burning hot glass.

And this time, it was Savion who screamed.

He let the dagger fall to the sand and bent over his arm, left hand clenched over his right, taut and shaking and pressing into the marble-sized circle of burnt skin in the palm of his hand. Mouth opened and closed without a sound. Tears pooling in his eyes and slipping down his cheeks, trembling and dripping off his chin.

When Mersinda got to the yard, she found them still like that. Jan standing over a kneeling Savion, who was cradling his right hand beneath his stomach. "What happened?" She asked sharply.

Jan quickly dropped the dagger back in the sand, shoving the wet cloth back in his pocket. Mersinda didn't see. She wasn't looking at him. He could only hope the glass had been cooled enough.

"He burned me!" Savion screamed through his tears. "He-- he--"

"How?"

"M-my dagger... he did something. He did something to to it and--" His voice was choked off by gurgled sobs.

Pale, wet eyes watched as she leaned down and looked at it. The glass jewel winked back at her. Wondering if it was safe to touch, she poked cautiously at its vicinity, gently touched its blade. Nothing. No spark of mage-work or other magic. She took in in her hand and straightened up. The glass was warm. That was it. But Savion's palm held a perfectly round circle of raw, pink skin. Her eyes held Jan's, hard and calculating. "Come with me." She yanked Savion to his feet by his collar. 

All he could do was listen outside the door, because Mersinda did not choose to bring him into the lord's study. Only Savion's side of the story would be told. Almost certainly Jan would end up with a punishment ten times worse than he deserved. 

At least he had been right, the burn was worth it. A roundabout way of revenge, but this way there was a small sliver of possibility that Mersinda's logic would override Savion's hysterics in the eyes of Lord Ezren Regenmace. Perhaps. She had felt, after all, that the dagger was perfectly normal...

They were coming out. Jan straightened himself against the wall and eyed her nervously. Her face was impassive. It was, instead, Savion's dashing past him and down the hall, eyes stinging with humiliation, that told him there would be no whipping that afternoon.

"Walk with me," she said, tone giving nothing away. So he followed her out of the manor, past the small, sandy yard. Only once they were too far from the manor to be overheard did she take the dagger from her pocket and hold it out. "How did you do it?"

Was it a trick? Had she told the lord that Jan hadn't done it in order to get him to trust her and admit  he had? No, it was too much work. She didn't care enough about whether or not he got what he deserved. But still, he decided, he should not tell her.

A small, grim smile at his determined silence. "Tell me, Jan. I defended you not because I think you're innocent, but because there's no proof you're not. The Lord Regenmace thinks Savion burned himself in the kitchen this morning, because that's what I told him probably happened. Do you want me to go back in and tell him otherwise? It's of no interest to me if you are whipped or not, but I expect something in return for making sure you aren't. Tell me how you did it."

Well, that was true. Even without proof, the Lord Regenmace would believe her if she said Jan had done it. Telling her how wouldn't change the fact that she still held his fate in the palm of her hand.

"Hot glass," he said carefully, "Looks the same as cold glass." And he withdrew the cloth full of ice he had used to cool it when Savion was hunched over his hand on the ground.

Of course, she thought. How easy for the smith's son to get ahold of Savion's dagger, to heat up the glass jewel before heading up to the yard, to taunt the other boy until he grabbed it.

It was unexpected. It was smart. It was exactly what they were looking for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took time. Far longer than she had expected. Each day for a month she tried to talk to him, dropped pointed clues during lessons, reminding him that he was brilliant, he was needed. Needed by them. Savion could no longer get away with even an insult in his direction within her earshot-- not that he tried so hard after the incident with the dagger. 

"We've been looking for someone like you for forever," she'd tell him.

"Lots of people like me are out there," he'd grunt.

"No one else ever could have thought of that," she once pointed out.

"But they could," he muttered vaguely.

Yet even as he turned down each invitation to come to Maenar, to meet them, to give it a chance, he still loved to show her everything he thought of. How the glass trick could be used to make a blade even more deadly if coated with glass and heated, a way he'd figured out of mixing metals to make them stronger, a weapon he'd invented-- a metal band you held around your hand, with spikes that stuck out at the knuckles. Punch someone with it on and they wouldn't be getting back up. Each one of these made her renew her efforts. 

"We need you."

"You need an army that can fight the king's."

"That's never worked and it never will. We need assets the king won't even suspect. People like you. People who think of things no one else does."

Nothing worked. Day after day, he would not leave the Regenmace lands.

Until the night she burst out, as he was leaving the yard, "If your brother can join us, why not you?"

"Luce?" He demanded in a whisper. Luce, his brother? Luce, involved with the rebels?

Yes, Luce.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"How could you?"

Luce slammed into the wall and drew a sharp breath, more out of surprise than pain. Jan's shove had been more anger than intent.

"Could you possibly be slightly more specific?" The other twin asked dryly.

"The rebels!" He shouted. "The rebels! You knew?"

"I don't-- yes." He didn't deny it for more than a second. "Yes, for a while."

"How?"

"I've been doing stuff."

"What stuff?"

Luce wasn't intimidated by his glare, he'd lived with it too long. "They can't get metal for weapons. The king's made sure anyone selling iron or steel knows the price of dealing with rebels. So they give me their money, and when I go to buy Father's rods I buy theirs too-- the man has no idea it's not all for Father. Then I give it to Mersinda and she gets it back to Maenar."

Jan cursed and kicked the wall hard enough to hurt.

"They've found you too?" Luce asked. "They want you?"

"They need me," Jan replied sarcastically. 

Luce's eyes lit up. "They want you to come to Maenar?"

"Yes, the idiots, Mersinda thinks--" Jan stopped short, realizing Luce's voice had not been mocking of the rebels, but excited.

"I won't."

"Why not?"

He wouldn't answer.

"Why not? You're the only reason I've been staying," he said fiercely, voice low. Their father had come out, was dumping a bucket of dirty water over the sooty, uneven paving stones of their tiny courtyard. "I won't leave till you do, but I want to, Jan!"

"For what? For a fight that has nothing to do with us?"

"It has to do with everything."

"I won't."

"You will." Luce had gotten that look on his face, that fierce and vaguely dangerous smile that was more in his narrow, dark eyes than in his half-upturned mouth. "I'll make you."

"Just try it," Jan scowled back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That smile hovered in the edges of his vision for a week. It was a sideways smirk shot at him behind Father's back, a half-whispered comment as they took turns working the bellows. He knew Luce had a plan. He just hadn't expected it arrive at the door one moonless night when Father had left for the next town over. 

The plan was named Aiden Amathos and the first thing he said was, "Are you Luce or Jan?"

His response was a blank stare and then a dark glare that accumulated heat with every second.

"Ah," Amathos said with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Jan."

Luce was more welcoming, but then again, Amathos was there because of him. Luce had told Mersinda Jan would never come around on his own; Mersinda had decided he was worth bringing in a professional. Amathos was, Jan figured, the closest thing to a professional rebel there was.

The man told them that he owned a store in the capital, but it was only a cover for his real work. Recruiting. "We'll never raise an army bigger than the king's own, so we must have something even better."

"I'm not it," Jan told him flatly.

"No, you are most definitely not," Amathos replied coolly.

He was stunned into silence by this new approach of recruiting him. Not lying, but telling the straight-up truth. But how did he expect to get him to Maenar, then?

Amathos settled more comfortably in his chair. "You're not it, but you're something. And I will tell you right now, you can stay here your whole life, on Regenmace land, forging their weapons, answering to their law, wasting what you've got-- or you can come with us."

"You've already got my answer."

"You'd rather stay here, going nowhere, doing nothing? That's what you'll be doing for the rest of your life."

"I know. It isn't a matter of not knowing what I'm choosing, it's a matter of not wanting what you're offering."

Now it was Aiden's turn to be stunned. He had never encountered this in a talented young man-- not fear of the fight, but an honest lack of ambition.

And that might have been it. Aiden might have cut his losses and walked out of the house, accepting that he had one twin and perhaps one day the other would find them. Luce might have left that night with him, to join the rebels in Maenar, leaving Jan alone to face their Father the next day. Jan might have spent the rest of his life on Regenmace land, forging their weapons, under their law.

But that's not what happened. Because he said, "All right. Then I understand. But last thing I would like to know-- show me what you did with the glass."

He did. He showed him how he heated it in the fire, how it looked the same fiery-hot as it did winter-cold, dunked it in water and let him see the steam that rose off of it. Even Luce was impressed, though naturally he didn't show it. 

"It's amazing," Amathos murmured.

"Simple," Jan said with a shrug.

But Amathos was lost somewhere too deep in his mind to hear. "Glass. I never thought of that. Either it's solid and you use it, or you heat it up to melt it... but hot glass that's still solid--" He looked up sharply, but his eyes were still focused inside rather than out. "You'd almost wonder if hot glass burns skin and can be used like a weapon, what would hot magical glass do to spells?"

Luce and Jan had no answer. But Aiden was already close to finding them himself.

"If nothing else, you have been slightly helpful," Amathos told him. "And for that, even if you are revoltingly stubborn, I must thank you." He was standing up, clasping his cloak, preparing to leave. No doubt there was a horse waiting outside, and a four-day trip back to the Capital.

"You're going to use the glass in a spell?" Jan wanted to know. That his simple trick could be useful in something as complicated at mage-work was something he'd never considered.

A thin smile. "Perhaps. You may have unknowingly come up with an entirely new way of counteracting-- rather, burning through spells."

"Oh."

"That's what all masters do. Build on each other."

"I'm a master?" It was strange to say. No one expected a grubby metal-smith to do anything more complicated than shoeing horses or occasionally mending a sword. Certainly, he wasn't expected to be a master at his craft. For real masterpieces people went to the city. That was where masters lived. "A master?" He repeated. He was that good?

Aiden glanced at him with pity. "You could have been."

If he stayed where he was, he never would be. But in the cities there were other smiths, people he could learn from, people who would... build on him. Everything he did would be better. He could be the best.

If he went.