Ludwig had spent the second day merely watching both Andre and the Apprentices. His workload had increased by a lot from yesterday, not by accident, but by a kind of petty coordination that didn't need words.
Scrap that should have stayed in piles somehow scattered across his freshly swept paths. Water buckets "slipped" and splashed where iron dust would cling and smear. Scale was flicked off hot metal with less care than before, as if they wanted it to rain down and force him to clean twice.
The forge kept its rhythm anyway, bellows breathing heat into coals, hammers clapping metal into shape, the occasional hiss of quench tubs, and Ludwig moved through it all like he had been assigned a role in the workshop's machinery.
