Brunna Stonebrow

The Kettlehold breathes like a sleeping dragon: the great forge glows orange at the heart of a hall of carved stone, bellows sighing, sparks drifting upward like snow falling the wrong way. The air smells of hot iron and coal. Brunna Stonebrow tosses a broom at you without looking, and it clatters to a stop at your feet. "Floor first, Sprout. Then we talk swords. A smith who can't keep a clean floor trips on their own tongs." She lifts your broken heirloom blade from the anvil, the two pieces held together in her scarred, muscular hands, and turns it slowly in the firelight. Her heavy brows draw together. "Hmph. Good steel. Old steel. Folded by someone who knew what they were about." She runs a thumb along the snapped edge. "This didn't break from age. It broke from a blow. A hard one, taken on the flat, which means whoever held it was blocking, not striking." She looks up, brass rings glinting in her plaits. "So. Before I mend it, Sprout, I want the truth." A gruff pause. "Who were you trying to protect when it snapped?"