New York City — November 1763
Cold did not arrive like a guest. It arrived like a creditor.
The first frosts were thin enough to vanish by noon, leaving only the memory of slick stone and stiff fingers. But wood noticed even when men pretended not to. Oak near the door tightened. Staves left stacked wrong began to warp. Iron held its bite longer.
Thomas adjusted the shop before weather forced him to.
He moved timber away from the outer wall and raised it off the floor on clean scrap so damp would not creep in from below. He shortened the day by a sliver—not enough to look indulgent, enough to keep hands from splitting. He had learned that a man could lose more to an infected cut than to a missed order.
Pieter followed changes without comment, working the way men did who had endured winters with nothing but their backs and a stove that failed when it wished. Margaret noticed everything and wrote it down.
"The cooper on Water Street sent again," she said one morning, setting her basket down. "Elias Brouwer. Fish barrels. Same number as last year."
Thomas did not look up. "Tell him yes. Price unchanged."
Margaret's quill paused. "Other coopers are short on staves. They're saying the yards won't deliver until after next moon. Something about contracts ending with the war."
Thomas nodded once. "I'm not short."
He did not say why. He did not need to.
Scarcity found the city by midmonth. Not famine—something subtler. Delays. Excuses. Timber yards that had always had stock suddenly wanted payment ahead. Ironmongers complained of shipments redirected, of paperwork, of customs men measuring, always measuring.
A chairmaker two streets over shut his doors. Another sold his tools. Men who had worked wood all their lives stood outside taverns, not drinking, just staring.
Thomas watched that and understood: if he continued only as a carpenter and cooper, he would be pulled into dependence on other men's supply.
So he bought a forge.
Not grand. Not theatrical. Brick, bellows, a secondhand anvil, tongs. Enough to make hinges and bands and nails without begging an ironmonger for stock that now came late.
Samuel Rooke raised an eyebrow when the forge was installed. "You turning smith now?"
"Only what I must," Thomas replied.
Rooke grunted. "Smithing takes coal."
Thomas nodded, and coal appeared.
Not in a mountain, not as a miracle—simply available when needed, as raw and plain as anything else. Thomas used it carefully. Waste invited attention; attention invited ruin.
Pieter watched the first heated iron with a craftsman's interest.
"You know?" Thomas asked.
Pieter shook his head. "Little."
"Then you'll learn little," Thomas said. "Enough."
Thomas himself worked the bellows at first. Not because he loved it—he loved nothing that way—but because discipline began at the hands that made decisions. He made iron bands for barrels, hinges for crates, straps for repairs. The forge did not make him rich. It made him independent.
Two men came seeking work when rumor spread.
Jonah Mercer, whose left wrist had stiffened from frostbite the year before. He lifted carefully, planning every movement.
Samuel Pike, once a chairmaker, now a limping man with a tool roll and nothing else.
Thomas hired them both after one day's observation.
"No drink," Thomas said. "Paid on the day. You leave when called, you return when you can."
"Called?" Samuel Pike asked, cautious.
"Militia," Margaret said quietly.
Jonah's mouth tightened. "They'll call again. Peace doesn't mean rest for men like us."
Thomas nodded. "Exactly."
A boy hovered by the doorway near closing, boots scraped clean but worn thin, hair combed as if for church.
Margaret saw him first. "Patrick."
Patrick Doyle swallowed. "I did my sums."
"Then show them," Thomas said.
The slate was plain and correct.
"School first," Thomas told him. "You come here after. You don't touch tools. You don't run errands in the street alone. You don't get used by men who promise coin."
Patrick's eyes widened. "Yes, sir."
Pieter muttered, half to himself, "Goed hoofd." (Good head.)
It was not charity. It was investment. A literate boy became a literate clerk, and a literate clerk became a node in a network that money could not always buy.
A merchant arrived with polished boots and soft threats.
Caleb Thorn, of Thorn & Leary, stood just inside the doorway like a man testing whether a place could be bought.
"Exclusive supply," Thorn said. "Steady work. Good rates. Protection."
Thomas finished setting an iron band, checked the seam, then looked up. "No."
Thorn blinked. "You didn't hear terms."
"I heard them," Thomas said. "I don't sell exclusivity."
"Winter squeezes men," Thorn said, voice mild.
"It squeezes careless ones," Thomas replied. "I'm not careless."
Thorn's mouth tightened. He left without raising his voice. Those were the ones who returned later, either with new offers or new knives.
Three days later, the militia notice arrived not as a shout but as paper.
Ensign Robert Hale stood at the door with a stiff posture and borrowed authority.
"They need men," Hale said. "North again."
Pieter's eyes met Thomas's for a moment. He understood the meaning, not the language.
"You'll go," Thomas said. "All of you, if called."
Samuel Pike asked the only question that mattered. "Pay?"
"Continues," Thomas replied.
Hale hesitated. "That's unusual."
"So is peace with no terms," Thomas said, and Hale looked away as if the sentence had touched something he didn't wish to name.
That night, Thomas marked wages in the ledger as if it were as natural as counting boards.
Margaret stayed late.
"Other shops will close," she said quietly, copying figures by lamplight.
"Some will," Thomas agreed.
"And if they don't return?"
"Then their families eat anyway."
Margaret looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once as if accepting a burden. "I'll tell them," she said.
On Sunday, Father Keane preached restraint, not victory. He spoke of peace as an ordering, not a comfort. After Mass, he approached Thomas quietly.
"There will be garrisons," Father Keane said. "Permanent ones."
Thomas nodded. "And payment."
"Expected," the priest confirmed. "From colonies that didn't sign anything."
That was the knife hidden in the word peace.
Thomas walked home along the river's edge where thin ice filmed in the shadows. Ships sat restless, their crews waiting for orders that had not come. Men argued in Dutch and English both. He caught only fragments and tone.
He did not intervene. He learned names instead. Dockmasters, carters, clerks. People moved; people mattered.
Back in the shop, he wrote names on a blank page beside the ledger.
Not because he loved power. Because power would love him if he did not guard himself against it.
Winter was tightening. Peace was tightening too.
Thomas locked the door.
Measure first. Weight second. Nothing wasted.