Breakthrough! I found out who MV is. Or was. Or is it is? What’s the proper way to refer to a ghost, anyway?

The source of my info was none other than Blaise, my rat-sacking aqueduct-clean-out partner. He was on duty at the forges when I brought my scutum in for ding repair. Stepping into that workspace was like crawling inside an asthmatic dragon, all hot and humid with weird wheezing sounds. The only light source was the orange glow of the furnace until Blaise flicked a switch and a bank of harsh fluorescent overheads came on. Kind of fizzled the volcanic atmosphere, if I’m honest.

I didn’t think Blaise knew who I was—I mean, we’re not in the same cohort and we’d literally spent thirty seconds together on chore duty last week—so I was shocked when he greeted me by name. Of course, he could have just read it off my probatio tag, but still…A for effort. He laid my shield on the worktable and ran his fingers over it, his brow furrowed. When I asked if he could fix it, he made a face. “Uh, duh. It’s what I do.” Then he picked up a little hammer and started banging away at the dents.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stick around until he finished, but I did because Blaise was such stimulating company. Ha! Wrong. I stuck around because I’d spotted the net of a retiarius gladiator in need of a few replacement weights. Since it was already broken, I didn’t see any harm in taking it for a spin.

The problem with whirling a poorly weighted net inside a crowded space is that things get knocked over. And tangled up. And ever-so-slightly damaged. Whoops.

One of the things I knocked over was an old leather-bound book filled with beautiful sketches of weapons and shields and armor. Blaise yelped when he saw me paging through it. Turns out the book is one of a kind and contains the life’s work of an ancient master craftsman and demigod son of Vulcan, Mamurius Veturius.

MV.

I wasn’t sure the craftsman was my MV until Blaise mentioned that Mamurius is a ghost who usually hangs around the forges. That’s when I realized the squiggly oval around the initials on my note looked a lot like the outline of a ghost. So if I’m right—and I sure hope I am, because this is the only lead I’ve got—then I finally have MV’s identity.

What I don’t have is his actual incorporeal presence. Blaise hasn’t seen Mamurius at the forges for over a week. Which he says is weird, because the ghost is always lurking around there.

So, MV is not only a dead guy, but a dead end unless I can track him down. And how the heck am I supposed to do that? The guy can appear and disappear at will. He could be anywhere!

Blaise might be able to tell me about him, I suppose. He and Mamurius are both Vulcan’s sons, after all, which makes them half brothers. (Yikes. My head hurts just thinking about that.) But after the mess my net-twirling caused in the forges, I’m not sure I’m his favorite probatio right now. In fact, I think he was adding dents to my scutum when I left.

So for now, I’ll forge on alone. (Ha!)