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If anyone asked young Jancis, there were two things in life she loved best, and one she loathed with equal intensity: she adored her grandfather, and all the wonderful things he created in his crafthall, and she despised how frequently her mother tried to keep her away from them.
Girls, her mother often said, were healers or weavers or ladies of their own holds—they did not work the bellows or smelt metal, extrude wires or blow glass. Girls were made for delicate things, not the heavy labor of her grandfather’s hall. And they did not escape from whatever duties their mother expected of them whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Jancis was six years old and ready to learn how to be a proper young lady, the idea of which appealed to Jancis not at all; she didn’t mind the lessons with the hold harper and the other children, which were fun, but she didn’t enjoy the things her mother thought she ought to know; needlework mostly, and the fetching and carrying for the apprentices and journeymen in her parents’ crafthall. They were weavers, but Jancis preferred the noise and industry of her grandfather’s forges and all the things the smiths could produce, from the practical to the pretty and everything in between. Clothing of course was useful but there was nothing exciting in the making of it, Jancis found.
Not that she had a lot of choice in the matter: her mother wanted her to be a weaver, or a crofter with a household of her own, and Jancis would do whatever was decided for her.
It didn’t stop the girl from sneaking away as much as was possible whenever her parents were busy. She liked to tinker with all the little things her grandfather kept about his office and he always had the time and patience to explain what each thing did, or might do, unlike her own father who would rather Jancis kept little hands away from the fine bolts of cloth he created on his looms. And Master Terry would let her experiment to her heart’s content, keeping a special box of odds and ends just for her to play with.
That was where Jancis had taken herself today, while her mother and Auntie Arella were busy gossiping over the state of Grandfa’s hall; Jancis knew it was a bit of a mess, but everyone was so busy who had time to stop and clean? Smiths had more important things to do. She didn’t like that her mother and auntie were busy plotting how to marry her grandfather off again—he did just fine and he didn’t have time for a wife, everyone knew that. But her mother said it was a disgrace the way things looked, and grandmother would be appalled to know the state of it.
Escaping her mother was not, however, the reason for Jancis’s visit that day. She’d been learning her letters with the other children her age, and those lessons had drawn Jancis’s curiosity to the large row of bookshelves at the back of Master Terry’s office. Most things were shoved haphazardly wherever they might fit, but three shelves along the bottom had tidy stacks of neatly bound leather journals, precious enough on their own with their fine, hide sheets, but also unusual in their lack of dust and cracked binding. They looked well cared for, the covers soft and worn from frequent handling, and Jancis was curious to discover why he had so many precious documents bound together.
“Master Terry, what’s these?” Jancis asked, fingers brushing against the delicately carved leather spines of the ones closest to her; the smith glanced up, and a reminiscent smile crossed his face as he swiveled in his chair to face the young girl.
“Your grandmother’s journals,” the older man replied, putting down his tools and giving her his full attention. “Did you want to see?”
Jancis nodded; she had never known her grandmother, but she’d heard the stories from her mother and Auntie Arella—Jana had been a fine woman who kept the SmithCraft Hall neat and tidy, unlike its current slovenly state, as Auntie Arella said with her mouth pinched in its customary scowl. She didn’t like the other wives at the hall, who didn’t know their place or duties; Jancis thought she just didn’t like that those women got to do much more interesting things than take up hems or sew intricate gowns for the real ladies of Telgar Hold.
Not that she blamed her auntie, because some of Telgar’s ladies were right royal bitches, as Grandfa liked to say. But Jancis still thought the women in the SmithCraft Hall had far more fun than the ones in the Hold.
“Hang on, Jannie, let me find you a good one,” Master Terry said, kneeling down beside the child and running his hands over the precious records. “Here. This one’s from not long after your grandfather got his journeyman’s knot. He and your grandmother got married just after, you know.”
Jancis did not know, but she still took the book into her hands reverently. She wondered why Master Terry kept them in his office, since what records the hall’s headwoman kept were in the communal kitchen, next to the cooking hearth; maybe because they were old they kept them here, though it wasn’t the usual place for records, either. And it didn’t explain why they looked so well cared for.
Carefully the young girl turned the first pages, eyes widening at the drawings, the formulas and numbers that accompanied each concisely written paragraph and diagram. She didn’t understand most of the words, but this did not look like the records her mother kept. They looked much more like some of the ones she watched her father write out of an evening when he’d completed some new, intricate pattern, or was trying out a new dyeing technique. Jancis wrinkled her nose in confusion, trying to sound out letters as the hold harper had taught her.
“These…these aren’t Hall records,” Jancis guessed eventually, flipping through the pages and missing the pleased gleam in Master Terry’s eyes. “These are all notes how to do the things you and Grandfa make!”
“Your grandmother used to write down everything for us,” the smith explained. “And she was just as good as the rest of us at some things. I wish I had half her skill making varnishes and protective coatings for some of the wood and metalwork we do.”
Jancis gaped, young eyes round with astonishment as she poured over the detailed technical drawings, the complex explanations written in a finely printed hand. She wished she knew what they said, but she knew Master Terry was far too busy to explain each one to her; she would have to sneak away far more often and risk her mother catching her if she wanted to learn everything contained in those books. “Grandmother was a Smith, too?”
Master Terry laughed. “She was a lot of things, Jannie,” he replied. “A fine headwoman and a talented craftmaster in her own right. Always curious about things. You take after her a bit there.”
Jancis smiled at the idea she had something in common with her grandmother, besides the name her mother had given her.
“But, she did smithcrafting too?” Jancis repeated. That was not what her mother had told her. Girls could not be smiths, only their wives or daughters. A forge was no place for a young lady, she said, though there were so many different things in the hall that the metalworks were only one part of it.
“Course she did. Your grandmother would have given us all a good hiding if we’d told her she had no business knowing the craft,” Master Terry replied with a laugh. “She knew everything your grandfather did, sometimes better than even he and I could do.”
Jancis would have asked more questions, but her grandfather appeared in the doorway to Master Terry’s office, a frazzled look on his face. “Ah, there she is. Jannie, your mother’s coming looking for you again. Terry, Benden’s called me to the Weyr.”
Jancis sighed; that would be the end of her fun for the day. She glanced longingly at the journal in her hands, wishing she could stay longer.
“Grandfa, I want to be a smith just like you. And Grandmother,” Jancis told her grandfather earnestly, trying not to look downhearted at the impossibility of her wish. Fandarel crouched down, ruffling her hair and giving the young girl a fond smile.
“Do you now, pet?” he replied gruffly, and Jancis thought maybe she saw a bit of tears in his eyes, but that wouldn’t make sense; her great big grandfather never cried, not for anything. “Your mother wouldn’t like that, but it would make me very happy if you did.”
Stuff her mother, Jancis thought crossly. All her mother cared about was turning Jancis into a smaller version of herself and marrying Grandfa off again. She’d lied about her grandmother too, and everything she’d done. She wasn’t a lady, she was a smith! A proper one, as good as her grandfather Master Terry had said.
“I’ll run away then,” Jancis stated, with all the vehemence only a six-year-old child could muster. Fandarel laughed. “I don’t see why I can’t though, if you say I can.”
“I don’t see why not, either. I’ll organize the harper to bring you children down for some special lessons,” her grandfather said, patting Jancis on the shoulder and smiling at the wide grin that lit her face. “Your mother can’t protest if you’re in a group, can she? Maybe I’ll speak with the MasterHarper and get some other talented young people brought up too. Would you like that?”
“Oh yes please,” Jancis breathed, hugging the journal to her chest. “Do you…do you suppose I could keep these? I can get the harper to teach me how to read them, on my own.” Hopefully her mother wouldn’t find them and be angry, but then she shouldn’t be if they came from her own mother and Grandfa gave them to her. They weren’t the lessons Jancis was meant to study, not the ones her mother wanted her to learn anyway, but they were so much better.
“Best leave them here,” Terry told her gently, patting his desk for Jancis to place the journal there, and from the look in his eye Jancis knew he didn’t expect her mother to be happy if he found the young girl with them either. “That way they don’t get damaged, or you lose them. But you’re welcome to read them as much as you’d like whenever you’re in the Hall, and then when you’re older maybe you can have them, and you’ll end up just as clever as your grandmother.”
Jancis glanced up at the proud smile on her grandfather’s face, then to the journal in her hands. If they were willing to help her, there wasn’t any reason she couldn’t do it, no matter what her mother might think; she could be a Master Smith, with her own hall, and make all the wonderful things just like her grandparents before her. After all, her grandmother had left behind everything Jancis needed; Jancis might never know her, but she could still learn from all the journals she’d written. She’d prove to her mother girls were just as capable of being smiths—and Jancis would become the very best, exactly like her grandmother.