Vasso played his fingers over the cover of his book. Hangman’s Helm was a story about a gang of braced traveling the Apion Sea, this one being the seventh in the series, each one focusing on a different member of the crew. His fingers caught on the edge of the book’s frame where the protective covering was fraying.

“Alright,” Ranvir said, getting to his feet. Vasso’s eyes shot to him. His father—it felt weird to think about Ranvir like that, but also comforting—rolled his neck. “I’m going to find dad.” he glanced at Frija, who was carefully prodding at the dead fireplace. “Granddad.”

“Okay,” Vasso said. His voice was too quiet to be heard. He realized the moment he said it. He tried to clear his throat and try again, but it felt like something had settled in his windpipe and blocked it. Frija barely acknowledged him, so deep in her experiment was she. Of course, Ranvir wouldn’t have let her play in the fireplace if she could actually get hurt, so there was no genuine danger.

Vasso stood up from his chair, causing both Ranvir and Frey to look at him. Ranvir’s gaze was a familiar weight, but he could feel his ‘grandmother’s’ eyes on him like a disapproving sun, searing the skin off his bones.

“Can we…” he gestured to the door and Ranvir nodded.

“Of course.”

Vasso forced a quick twist of his lips in the semblance of a smile. Hopefully. Ranvir closed the door behind them and looked curiously at Vasso. “What’s up?”

Scratching at his forearm, Vasso looked around the little village. Rural and primitive, it lacked the common amenities, even the most isolated villages in Limclea had. The houses were small and dirty; the windows were mostly missing, replaced by wood, or so twisted they might as well be stone for how much light they let through.

“What if,” Vasso said, clearing his throat. It was easier to talk out here, away from Frey, away from other people. Though he saw a small group around a well in the distance. “She doesn’t like me?”

“Mom?” Ranvir said, sounding surprised. “She adores you, you’ve got nothing to fear from her, Vasso.” he slapped a heavy hand on Vasso’s shoulder and squeezed. Ranvir had so much power within his body, Vasso could almost imagine it permeating his skin and soaking into Vasso himself. “Besides, it won’t be long. An hour or two, at most. You’ve got the book, right? If all else fails, you can just read. She loved it when I took the time to do so.”

Vasso smiled tightly and nodded. “Okay, Dad.”

“See you.”

Vasso stepped back into the small house. Frey had pulled the table out from the wall and was leaning her straightened arms on it. He noted the veins crisscrossing her forearms and the striations of muscle underneath. Despite being an amputee, Frey hardly looked frail. Her arms had a solid look that reminded Vasso of Amalia. She didn’t bulge with muscle like some men did, but the quiet strength of competence that came from work rather than exercise.

“Vasso,” Frey said, offered him a fake smile. She could barely force her lips to move as she looked at him. She only saw his clothes, foreign and strange. His darker skin and rare facial features. “Could you help me flip the table?”

Vasso opened his mouth to ask ‘why?’, but couldn’t quite find the strength to do so. Frowning, he moved to the other end and lifted with her. The balance was off, and he strained to keep the table under control as they tipped it.

Red faced and panting, Vasso let go of the table legs, settling it upside-down. He could now see strange irregular designs carved into it. About a third of the table had been hacked at unprofessionally, though that might just be their under developed tools rather than skill lacking.

“See here,” Frey said, kneeling on the table and reaching into the fireplace and pulling out a piece of charcoal. She demarcated a space about a third the size of the markings. She looked to Frija, who’d been observing them this entire time with wide eyes. “This is the area that you get to work on. You can make any pattern you like. It can change as you prefer as well, but only within this line, okay?”

Looking closer, Vasso noticed then the markings clearly had a clean straight line going splitting them as well.

“This,” Frey said, pointing to the one next to Frija’s space, “was Ranvir’s. The one here was Gunnor, your grandfather’s, and this was Gunnor’s dad, your great-grandfather.”

“How old is that?” Frija asked. “Fifty?”

Frey paled slightly at that. Her hair had gone gray and wrinkles had worn their way onto her face, but Vasso didn’t think she was that old. Early forties, according to Ranvir.

“Much older than that,” Frey said, “besides, fifty isn’t that old.”

Frija snorted and didn’t look up as she drew a pattern of waves emanating from the corner of her area. The lines were shaky, both from the grain of the wood and her unsteady hand. Frey shot him a look that told him he better keep quiet. It was a familiar sight.

“Help me up, will you?” Frey asked, holding a hand up.

Vasso hurriedly took it and was nearly pulled off his feet. Frey surged to her feet, and he stumbled a step forward, catching himself on the table leg instead of trampling her. Blushing, Vasso averted his gaze and quickly sat down. He thumbed the edge of his book, holding it across his stomach.

He kept his eyes locked on Frija’s work. She’d switched hands to make a… it might be a square pattern or perhaps five-sided? It was hard to tell. Smudges of charcoal stained the wood in half a dozen places. She shifted, leaving a handprint on the wood, then wiped her cheek, scoring a black across her chin before scraping it across the grain of the wood. It was gearing up to be a mess, though that must’ve been expected.

“So, Vasso, what do you do?” Frey asked after a few moments of silence.

Blinking, he looked up at her. “Schoolwork, mostly,” he ran his fingers along the spine of Hangman’s Helm.

“School? So you’re going to the academy?” Frey cocked her head. “Or no, there must be something like it where you come from, right?”

He coughed into his hand. “It’s just the local school in Eriene. That’s the village we live in.”

“Oh, that’s… Isn’t it a little early?”

“It’s just mathematics, reading, writing, and a few other skills.”

“Oh,” Frey said, nodding as if he cleared something up, “that’s good.”

He smiled, looked away, and hugged his book tighter. They were quiet for a while, watching as Frija meandered her way down the table, filling it in with patterns. She appeared to be making some sort of oval in the middle from which a bunch of fiery paths emerged from. Despite her amateurish abilities, it was kind of interesting to watch.

Then she banged her head into one of the table legs. Hard. It shook the house. The sound reverberated through the space. Frija stumbled back and fell on her ass, clutching her head. She screwed her face up and looked up at Frey. Her face seemed to teeter on the edge of a breakdown.

Vasso looked at her for a long moment, before shrugging and settling into his chair.

“You okay?” Frey asked, though he noted the glance she sent his way. Apparently, his reaction had been noticed. Frija shook her head slowly, still cradling her head. “You want me to kiss and blow it better?” she nodded. “Then come over here.”

Frija staggered over, steering well clear of the table, and was treated by her grandmother. Within a few minutes, she was sniffling, coal in hand, and approaching the table.

“You weren’t worried about her?” Frey asked harshly.

Vasso flinched and shook his head slightly. “If you scream, yell, or come running, it’ll only make the kid more unruly.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I spent six years in an orphanage.”

Frey shut up. “If you don’t acknowledge them at all, they learn their feelings do not matter.”

Vasso nodded and worried at the torn spot of covering on his book. The first ‘Hangman’s’ book in the series had been centered on the Captain and his difficult relationships with people he could not avoid, as he tried to get his old man’s ship up and running again. Perhaps this was one such relationship for Vasso. One that would never be quite comfortable, always leaving him on the edge of his seat, never feeling welcome. But she was the mother of his adopted father, so had to suffer through it.

The Captain’s relationship with his mother had been strained for his insistence on following in the footsteps of his father, but the Captain never stopped trying to reconnect with her. She even made several appearances in the later books, even though the Captain was no longer in the center of the story.

“So what do you do?” Vasso asked, his throat trying to claw the words back into his mouth.

Frey paused as if taken aback, then gestured to the door into the forge. “Jewelry.”

Oh right, Vasso cursed himself and looked down.

“I see you have a necklace. Is it something you care about as well?”

Vasso looked up, then thumbed the bond around his neck. Lifting out the translation stone, Frey visibly startled when she saw the faint gray light emanating from the contraption. He didn’t understand the structure at all, but knew it had cost Ranvir a lot of keys.

“I can’t speak the language without this,” Vasso said.

“You can’t speak…” Frey trailed off, disbelief writ clear on her face.

Vasso looked away, resisting the urge to pull his feet onto the seat. The older kids had made enough fun of that behavior to ensure he would never do that in public. He didn’t need to see the look on her face, to know she was disgusted with him. He had been adopted by Ranvir, too old to actually be his son, and he couldn’t even understand their language without expensive help.

Vasso pulled the book tight until the edges hurt as they dug into his stomach. He didn’t know what the Captain would do in this situation. He didn’t know how to fix this. His face screwed up, and he glared at the floor. His focus was so intent, he didn’t notice the door to the forge opening, nor the rustle of tools and clatter of metals.

Only when items were thrust into his field of view did Vasso realize Frey was talking to him. “…to make these want to try?”

“Huh?”

“I taught Ranvir to make these, want to try?” there was a weirdly strained look on Frey’s face, but Vasso determined it to be kind in the end.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was quiet, as if something was choking his windpipe, but he reached up and took the thin silvery plate and rough iron tool.

“Come along and I’ll show you how to begin.” Frey put a hand on his shoulder and waved toward the workshop.