“ ‘Issued our weapons,’ she says,” he mocks her. “That is mighty fancy talk from vagrant scum Aegins scraped off a barroom floor.”

Evie quickly bites her lower lip, feeling caught off-guard. She knows she has only a brief second to dismiss that observation before he looks up at her and really starts to think about it.

“I’m a fellow reader,” she manages. “That’s a classic, you’ve got there.”

Laython grunts in mild approval. “You can draw gear and weapons whenever you want, from the armorist’s wagon. Ask around for Spud-Bar.”

“Thank you,” Evie says quickly.

“Thank me by letting me shit in peace.”

She finds the armorist’s wagon on the opposite edge of camp. It looks like a conveyance adorned for some kind of demolition contest; every inch of its exterior is covered in jagged, rusty blades and spiked pieces of wood, steel, and iron. Swords and daggers dangle from hooks. Axes fill racks and spears fill baskets bolted to the wagon’s hide. Shields are piled high in rows on its roof, in between bundles of longer pikes and horse-cutters, and netting filled with mixed pieces of armor bulge over the sides.

Peering within the wagon, Evie sees a rugged but obviously skilled makeshift smithy shop. There are several anvils, large vise grips, and cutting and sharpening tools.

And, of course, dozens of more bundles of secondhand weapons.

The armorist is nowhere to be found, at least that Evie can see. Standing outside the wagon, she grabs the first short sword she spies and quickly discards it like the trash it is. She rifles through several more swords, chucking them aside each time. She snaps the blade of one in half over her knee, dropping the separated pieces in sheer disgust.

Evie finally retrieves a short ax that doesn’t immediately raise any warnings as she examines it. There are no chips in the blade’s edge, nor any cracks in its surface.

“You know steel,” a deep voice says, and it’s not a question.

Evie turns, ax in hand, having to adjust her gaze upward several feet to meet the speaker’s eyes. They’re tall and broad with a plain stony face.

“Spud-Bar?” Evie asks. “The armorist?”

“Yes.”

Evie observes two things right away, the first being there isn’t a single raised rune in Spud-Bar’s flesh; no one’s forced a coin down that particular gullet. The second thing she observes is that Spud-Bar is an Undeclared. In addition to their size and androgynous features, they’ve shaved the sides of their head in popular Undeclared fashion, gathering the hair that remains into a topknot.

Evie holds up the ax. “I didn’t mean to presume—”

“You know steel,” Spud-Bar repeats. “That’s rare in the types they send us, particularly the new ones. Most of ’em don’t know a good knife even if they’ve used one to stab a bartender to death.”