Finding The Soul Bridge (The Soul Fire Saga Book 1) by Zax Vagen Read Free Book Online Page B

sweating and looked annoyed, “Carriage wheel tyres. I’m Zain.”
    Zain was dirty, and wore a sleeveless tunic. He was thin with a gaunt face and he stank like someone who worked in a forge everyday but never bathed.
    “Could you roll some spikes for me into tight coils?” asked Jem.
    Zain looked back at the large pile of tyres that he had already made and then at the even larger pile of unrolled tyres that he still needed to get through. “Did Maxwell send you for this?”
    “Yes, he said I should ask anyone for what I needed and should call him if I had any problems.”
    “Look man, don’t make problems for me, I’m barely on schedule, I haven’t taken a break in three days, if I help you then I will get behind.”
    Zain didn’t skip a beat while he was working. “The customer is hard pressed for this stuff, it’s the most urgent. Please can’t you make another plan?”
    Jem looked at the rolling tool that Zain was using. “It looks simple and easy to operate but if they are so behind then why not have a second one?”
    Zain looked perplexed. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
    “Fine.” said Jem, “Let me do one carriage tyre, so that I can see how difficult it is.”
    Zain shook his head and threw his hands up into the air, “This isn’t a game boy.”
    Jem bullied Zain out of the way and grabbed an unrolled iron bar, he was clumsy as he loaded the metal to be rolled and as he turned the handle of the roller he started to smile. “Now I know what Maxwell means by ‘Brain dead’. I tell you what Zain, help me out with my problem and I will fix this machine up to do three or even four wheels in one go.”
    Zain wiped his brow and beckoned for the spikes that Jem need to be rolled. He rolled the long thin steel spikes into tight coils one by one and handed them back to Jem, when he was finished he started rolling carriage wheels again. Jem thanked Zain and walked away. “You owe me.” Zain shouted .
    Jem went back to the ring mail bench and put his coils down and returned to the store.  He asked the store man, “Do you have any of those rollers for the carriage wheel rolling machine?”
    “Na-na-na no my buddy. Tha-that is a spe-spe-specialist item.”
    “Can we make up a new one?”
    “Ass-ass-ask Va-va-vance.”
    “Vance? Where is he?”
    The store man pointed to man wearing an apron but no shirt.
    Jem went straight to Vance and as he approached him he called “Vance! Hi, Vance.” There was no response.
    Vance sat on a low stool with his back turned to Jem as he was busy working on some nondescript piece of metal. Jem reached out and tapped his shoulder and called to him again. “Vance.”
    Vance turned around and looked at Jem. Halfway through Jem’s sentence Vance put up his hand and pointed to his ear and his mouth and then made the slit throat maneuver
manoeuvre
with his index finger meaning. ‘Deaf, mute.’
    Jem was stumped, he had never needed to communicate with someone who could not hear or speak.
    Vance raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders and raised his palms to the air level with his own face to make a ‘what?’ signal.
    Jem thought it best to show him and beckoned with his hand for him to follow. Vance followed Jem to the carriage tyre roller. First Jem pointed for Vance to watch as Zain rolled one iron carriage tyre. Then he pointed at the set of three rollers that was the heart of the machine and made a gesture with his hands to make the rollers several times wider to accommodate four separate iron bars at once.
    Throughout this exchange with Vance and Jem, Zain rolled iron tyres. Vance nodded and smiled and then gestured four fingers to his mouth and then swung his hand over head. This was lost on Jem and he looked at Zain who saw the gesture. “He says he will do it after lunch.” said Zain.
    Jem went back to his post at the ring mail table and continued his own tinkering. As he worked he thought about Kaylah, and Thist, and what Thist was up