Eadric and Orian are broad-shouldered, weather-browned men with the same blunt nose and deep-set hazel eyes, but they carry their years differently. Eadric stands square and still, his close-cropped hair bristling like a boot brush; Orian leans as if listening for a floorboard's complaint, his dark hair combed flat and silvering at the temples. Their palms are callused and their clothes smell faintly of oiled leather and iron filings. Each wears a tiny brass counterweight on a cord at his belt, polished bright by a thumb rubbing the same crescent into its edge. Unexpectedly, both keep immaculate little paper moths folded from shop receipts in their breast pockets.

Eadric is openly decisive but privately doubts every choice that puts someone else at risk. Orian is patient and observant until a person is being bullied, at which point he becomes startlingly blunt. Eadric enjoys a crowded shop but hates being thanked; Orian likes solitude but remembers every customer's name. Their affection is real and durable, though they can turn a disagreement about stock into an argument about their old battlefield choices.

The brothers inherited Brothers In Arms from their mother, who sold mended armor from a narrow shop near Sedgeford, a crossing choked each spring by stubborn reeds. As boys, Eadric wanted to enlist and Orian wanted to learn every craft that kept a soldier alive. They got both wishes when a border levy swept them into the same company. During the disastrous retreat at the ford locals call Mind the Drop, their captain ordered them to abandon wounded recruits to save the supply train. Eadric refused; Orian turned the wagon team around. They held a broken causeway long enough to get the wounded across, but lost their company and their trust in clean orders. Years later, they returned to the shop and made it a place where travelers could buy reliable arms, repairs, and blunt advice. Eadric still wants to protect people by standing between them and danger; Orian tries to prevent danger by noticing it early. Their former quartermaster, Zhubair, now runs a hard-nosed caravan and keeps asking them to sell him a crate of unregistered weapons. Their apprentice, Ptheska, is talented, impatient, and secretly sending money to a parent who once betrayed the brothers' company. A local magistrate is threatening to close the shop over the missing weapons registry.