She reached for the sword. The hilt was beautifully made—the grip wrapped neatly, the pommel carved with intricate knotwork designs.

“Now, this,” she said, even as Gwen raised her hands in protest. “Look at the—is it engraving, on the end bit here? If you could do this kind of thing on a horseshoe, you’d—whoops, maybe I won’t try and lift it, these are surprisingly heavy.”

Gwen had lurched forward in case Isobelle planned on dropping the sword, but (though it strained the biceps more than she’d like to admit) she managed to hold on to it until she could hand it over to the other girl.

“Whoops,” Gwen echoed, and Isobelle thought she saw her lips twitch. Without any sign of effort at all, the blacksmith’s daughter wrapped her own hand around the grip, swinging the sword up to horizontal and taking the scabbard with her other hand, so she could pull the weapon a few inches clear of it. She looked . . . dashing, really.

“Oh, now look at that,” Isobelle murmured, stepping closer to inspect the engraving that wound its way down the blade of the sword itself. She only realized how close she’d stepped when Gwen swallowed and spoke.

“You have good taste.” And then, after a pause: “I’ll tell my father you admired it.”

Isobelle looked up to meet her green eyes—they were part wariness, part curiosity, and a touch of pride. They were the color of the forest: a mossy green with hints of oak.

“I—” For once, when Isobelle launched herself, the rest of her words didn’t show up. To cover, she took a smart step back and spun away toward the goods on the counter. “It’s such a pity you don’t have anything else with that sort of engraving,” she said, listening to herself babble with a kind of fascination as she reached for a roll of linen she assumed was for wrapping purchases.

Feeling a lump, she twitched a fold of fabric aside, revealing a tiny figurine worked in iron, as far removed from the great horseshoes and buckles as Isobelle herself was from the lout across the way, still waving his noisy sword around.

The figure was that of a tiny iron knight, his lance raised, pennant frozen mid-billow. The horse he rode was elegantly and quite realistically depicted, one leg raised to take a spritely step. The armor itself was a thing of beauty, so detailed there were even tiny etched rivets at the joints.

“Oh, I love him!” Isobelle squealed, folding her hands behind her back in the universal sign for I-won’t-touch-this-fragile-thing and bending over to take a closer look. “Look at this handsome fellow! What is that on his pennant, a lavender blossom?”