Eisenwacht. A small village left over from the once great city of the Empire, the capital of Varnhagen. The Territory was originally known for its craftsmanship, as the Empire had once produced some of the greatest artisans on the North-Western Continent.

Since the Territory was located quite far north, in the Empire that covered half of the Northern Heights and stretched down to the Western Midlands, it was one of those regions that was freezing cold and partially snow-covered most of the year.

But in this village, it was said that it never really got cold, thanks to all the furnaces that ran non-stop. Slowing considerably, Rowena approached the small houses surrounded by a brittle stone wall.

There was no gate, just a gaping hole in front of her, so she could easily see into the village. Looking left and right, only one thing interested her. There wasn't much to see from the outside anyway.

Since it was already late, she couldn't just knock on everyone's door and ask, but she had a clue and she would find the house on her own. Frosty gravel crunched under her feet as she walked along the main path of the settlement.

She could hear voices muffled through the wooden doors and thin window panes, children laughing, adults talking, dishes clattering and fire crackling. The latter might have been her imagination, but there was a palpable warmth coming from these walls, it was nice.

Smiling, she walked on until her feet carried her further into the mountains, where the houses of the village grew farther and farther apart. These weren't normal houses; they were forges, judging by the larger accumulation of smoke coming from them.

Only one was sitting there in silence. And as she got closer, she saw the old sign dangling from a steel handle on the wall, barely recognizable in the darkness, with only the light of an oil lamp hanging next to the door below the sign.

The plate was made of bronze, old and worn, with an embossed insignia that looked like a blooming iris flower. "I found it."

"Found what?" someone behind her spat, making her almost jump out of her skin.

Turning, she saw an old man with a long beard, pulled together into a tail about a hand's width under his chin. His hair was so gray it looked almost silver in the bad lighting.

Since she didn't want to talk, he snorted, "Out of the way," and only then did Rowena notice the large wooden board he had tucked under his arm.

In his other hand he held a hammer and some nails. In the direction he had come from, a shed was barely visible in the distance.

Without saying a word, the lavender-haired noble just stood there and watched as he began to rip out a seemingly broken floorboard in front of the door she had originally headed for, in order to replace it with the one he had brought.

Suddenly, the door flew open. "Dear," a woman said calmly as she pulled a blanket tighter around her shoulders and walked out onto the porch, "I told you not to do this at this hour. Come back and do it tomorrow when it's light out and a bit warmer."

Grumbling, he didn't even stop his work to answer to her face. "But what if someone steps on it and it breaks?"

Of course, it was Iris who stood there, furrowing her brow. "Who's going to step on it, dear? We live alone."

At this, the old man did finally stop and looked up at his wife. "You could."

She smiled bitterly. "I don't even go out often enough for you to worry about that."

Rowena watched them have their little argument, feeling less cold by the minute, and wondered how she was going to find a crack to squeeze into their conversation. It wouldn't be easy, she feared.

But while she was lost in thought, something unexpected happened. "And who might you be, little girl?"

Blinking, the young woman stopped her thoughts and focused her attention on what was really going on, only to realize that she had become the center of attention. 'Well, that's not how I imagined it.'

"What do you want?" the man spat again.

But this time, his wife slapped him on the shoulder. "Don't be so insensitive, it's just a kid."

"Uh, I'm not a kid, actually," Rowena started, wondering why that was the first thing that came to mind, "I'm here for a commission."

They both eyed her up and down, trying to figure out her circumstances, but in the end Ansgar just got up from his kneeling position, dusting his knees slightly, though it was certainly not dust that had collected on those clothes.

"Why don't you come in first, it's getting very cold," his wife intervened before her husband could utter a word.

Smiling, Rowena nodded and followed them inside, where she was led through a small entryway with one door likely leading to the workshop and another to the living room.

"I'll make us some tea," she said, "make yourself comfortable."

Ansgar seemed to have a lot to say, but he couldn't. So he just sat down at the table and the young woman did as she was told.

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"A commission, huh?" the old man said, grunting, "Do you even have the money for that?"

Without so much as a hint of hesitation, Rowena reached into the bag that hung from her shoulder and neck and rested at her hip, pulled out a gold bar, and placed it bluntly on the table. "Will this be enough? If not, I can get more."

There was a sound of shock as Iris returned to the living room with a tray in her hands. She had already heated the water for her and her husband, so there wasn't much else to do but bring an extra cup to the table.

Coming into the room and seeing this girl take out an entire gold bar was a bit much, even for someone who had once been very close to such luxury. Maybe it was because she hadn't expected it.

"Don't you know how stupid it is to come here to the barren lands with something like that in your bag?" The old blacksmith seemed angry as he glared down at her.

She hadn't even taken off her cloak, which now felt a bit too stuffy to her as the heating only added to her artifact's ability to keep her warm. With a sigh, she undid the button that held her cloak in place and pulled the hood down.

"I am aware," she put it simply, "but this is not negotiable. I need your help, and of course I would have to pay the price."

You could see that the tray in Iris's hands would have almost dropped to the floor. This was much more shocking than the large chunk of gold lying on their old, splintering dining table.

There was no way they didn't know what their late Duchess had looked like, let alone what it meant to have someone so similar appear in their humble abode.

"We didn't know you were the young lady, please forgive us." The woman with the black hair and the silver streaks in it wasn't that easy to startle, but this girl might have just done it.

"So the lord wants me to work?" Ansgar asked regarding himself only. He didn't expect the Grand Duke to ask for his wife, as he knew best what that would mean.

"No," the young lady replied, "I want to commission you personally. I need you to make something for me."

He got up, annoyed and unwilling to have this kind of conversation. "Well, that's too bad for you."

"Ansgar!" his wife intervened, "Don't be so rude."

"But I'm just telling the truth. She won't get anything."

"You still don't have to..."

"It's okay," Rowena interrupted her trying to berate her husband, "I came unannounced, so I have to live with this treatment, but please, hear me out."

'Fine,' he thought, "Let's humor you. What would a noble lady like you need that you couldn't get in the capital?"

She placed a finger on her chin and looked up at the ceiling for a second, as if contemplating, then looked back into his eyes and said: "A weapon."

"What?" It was Iris who wasn't sure if she heard right. 'Why would this young girl want a weapon?'

"Weapons aren't toys." Ansgar tried to figure out her motives for coming to see them, but this wasn't what he had expected.

At first, he had thought that she had come for his wife. Perhaps to ask them to make some special jewelry.

"I'm aware of that," Rowena said, referring to Ansgar's ingenious claim, "I don't need a toy. I need a weapon. In fact, I need a blade."

"You could have asked someone from the capital to make it for you."

"No, it must be you. I need the best to forge this blade for me."

It confused him to hear a girl he had never seen or spoken to tell him that he was the best in his field. How could she know that?

And even if he was the best, why was this blade so important to her that she would come all this way just to have him forge it for her?

He hadn't heard anything about a direct descendant of their lord's family returning to the north. They hadn't been up there for more than five years.

However, he had heard the stories about the current state of the family. One of those stories was dedicated to the young woman sitting in front of him.

If his memory served him right, she should have been about seventeen this year, if not already eighteen. Now that he could see her clearly, he could tell that she wasn't a child, but her frame didn't give it away at all.

A girl that small wanted to carry a blade? "Don't make me laugh," he finally said aloud. "What would you do with a blade anyway? I don't make blades for showcases and parties anymore."

Rowena had read about how he and his wife were once known for making ceremonial swords in addition to the regular ones. He did the heavy lifting with the swords and other weapons, while she took care of the decoration. Since she made jewelry for a living, that was her forte.

But one day she stopped doing that, and even in the "The Saintess' Unbreakable Shield" she mostly retreated when her husband returned to his hammer.

Was he still doing commissions? Or was it because the Imperial Prince asked him to, so he did it in the novel?

She looked around the small hut, thin cracks had formed in the walls, and a window in her line of sight was crudely repaired with another plank of wood. It was also a big house, even bigger than the others she had passed, when she thought about it.

"I'm sure you are a good handyman, Ansgar," the girl began, "you must also have a good amount of savings from a few years ago. And hunting can still put food on the table, even if you can't earn anything with your handiwork for once."

"What are you trying to say?" He felt his pride strangely threatened by her words.

"I'm saying that with the money I can give you, you can repair whatever you need to. This house is getting old. You said it yourself, what if your wife gets hurt the next time a floorboard breaks, or a window bursts in the middle of a northern winter?"

Iris, who had now sat down, looked into a cup of tea that she had placed in front of her, just as she had placed one in front of her guest. The guest took the iron cup and blew softly on it, waiting for an answer.

"No," echoed through the room, which seemed so much bigger and emptier just then, as Rowena opened her eyes wide in surprise.

"But why?" She put the cup back down, raising her voice, and stiffening up slightly.

She really didn't have any other plan right now, as she didn't know enough about the two of them to negotiate more thoroughly here.

"Right," Iris added quietly and a little solemnly, "it would be better if you left now. I don't even know how you got here, my lady."

It was the first time either of them had addressed her by her title, which was meant to be respectful, but it seemed more like the woman was trying to say something else.

Since she couldn't do anything at this point, just knowing where she stood was a first step in her eyes. So she let it go for now.

"You're right, I'm sorry for coming over so late and without prior notice." As she stood up, took her gold and put the cloak back on, she nodded to both of them. "I'll see myself out. Thank you for the tea."

The two elderly denizens of her family's territory didn't even look at her, their heads hanging, teacups sitting untouched on the tabletop, and the house feeling emptier than ever.

But Rowena wasn't sure how to handle the situation, so instead of heading back to the chateau, she hopped onto a branch near the hut and watched them from a distance. There wasn't much to see and nothing to hear. But at least she knew that they were just sitting there. Until one of them got up.

It took about a minute for the door to open and a figure to step out, a lamp in hand, shining light on the porch before walking over to another gap in the village wall.

Without thinking, Rowena jumped silently from the tree and followed the former jeweler through the woods and into another clearing, where Iris knelt before a stone slab on the ground.

Rowena realized at that moment that she had followed her to a graveyard.