"Hey, just the person I wanted to see," Geoff said, scrubbing jeweler's rouge off of his hands with a rag. "I've been working on something for you."
"Should I be afraid?" Vera asked.
"You should be flattered." He swung the magnifying lense away from him, picked up a handful of something glittering from his workbench, and walked over to her.
"To replace the one you lost to the coronach. I made a couple of improvements." He held out his hand and turned it over, revealing a new stele. It was fashioned in the plain, solid style prefered by the senior members of the Clave, with straight sides tapering to a bullet-like point. The smoky-silver glass shimmered like stilled water. He thumbed the stele to the side. A long length of silver chain, decorated intermittantly with tiny gray moonstone beads, lay coled in the hollow of his palm. One end of the chain terminated in a clasp. The other was fastened to the stele with a captive metal ring.
"Wow," she said. "You shouldn't have gone to all that trouble." Her cheekbones began to burn. She hoped that the light away from the bench was poor enough that he wouldn't notice.
"Seeing as yours is always getting dropped or knocked out of your hand in a fight, I figured you might appreciate some extra help with that," he said, prompting a narrow-eyed glare. "Hey, don't be embarrassed. Connor has the same problem. If yours is a success, I'll make him one too. Now let's see," He caught her by the wrist and laid the stele against the inside of her forearm. The glass still carried the warmth of his hands. Vera sucked in a breath.
"You prefer to stash yours in your sleeve, right? Looks like I estimated the length just about right, a hair long, maybe. Wear it for a couple of days, and if it gets in your way, I'll grind it down by a few millimeters."
She bent her wrist. The point of the stele rested against the crease below her thumb and the butt settled against the bend in her elbow. She noticed that a faint, moire-like pattern of waves had been worked into the body of the stele, something that she'd never seen before. "I had no idea that you could damascene one of these. It's beautiful."
"Something new I'm working on," he said, dark eyes shining with obvious pleasure at the compliment. "You can secure that chain wherever you like, but… well, here, let me show you what I'd suggest." he pivoted around to her side and slid his palm up her bicep, letting the chain play out of his hand. As he threaded it under the shoulder of her top, bare fingers hot against her collarbone, she temporarily forgot how to breathe.
He brushed away the stray hair at the back of her neck and secured the clasp through the weave of her torc. "Looks like I guessed right on the length of the chain as well. Damn, I'm good. The lobster-claw here is a breakaway, so if it comes to it, it'll snap before you throttle yourself. The chain, on the other hand, not so much. Don't be like me and take that as a challenge. I shredded through a new pair of gloves and partway through my hands that way."
Vera scrutinized the chain. It was no more than a millimeter in diameter and looked quite delicate. She let the stele drop into her hand and extended her arm. The links seemed to stretch slightly at the furthest extent of its length, then to snap back when she relaxed. "No metal fatigue back there, I take it. Cat's breath and moonbeams?"
"Something like that. Been kicking design ideas back and forth with a couple of Elvish smiths." He bent close enough that she could feel his breath on her nape. "Humor the craftsman and try it out?" he requested, his voice low and soft, nearly purring. "I usually wouldn't hand something over without testing it, but it seemed to me that you should be the first to use it."
She shut her eyes momentarily, drew a deep breath, and pulled the stele against her open palm, etching in the first design that came to mind, without looking, without thinking. He made an inarticulate noise, low in his throat, that didn't sound entirely like the detached evaluation of a professional. The heat of his body pressed behind her, heart beating behind her shoulders, combined with the not-entirely-unpleasant burn of the stele was almost too much to bear. She felt dizzy, lightheaded.
She finished inscribing the mark, closed her fist around it, and pressed it into her body below the ribs, as if that would allow her to feel its effects more quickly.
"Well?" His hands twined around her elbows, and he craned his neck to look over her shoulder.
She stole a quick glance at her hand. Black marks stood out starkly against pale skin. "Works perfectly," she said. "Thank you. Seriously, though, Geoff. Why go to all this effort on my behalf? This is a masterwork stele, for the Angel's sake. Should be in the hands of one of the Clave heads in Alicante, not those of an unskilled novice."
"I made it for the hands that put a stele down the throat of a heart-eater to save my skin," he said, quiet but unassailably certain. "Besides, there's this lady I'm trying to impress. Do you think she might like it?"
"I know she will." Vera unfurled her fingers. The stylized eye-and-flourish of the fearlessness rune were graven there. "And she's just mustered the nerve to tell you how she feels."