Page 38 of Red Demon
Settled
The fabricator roared along to Galen’s rhythmic hammering, working alongside me to fasten hilts to finished blades. Sweat trickled down my back as we worked, despite the open windows letting in a cool spring breeze. The barracks had recently expanded their weekly order, adding a massive number of swords to what should be a sizable stockpile.
“Think the barracks are expecting trouble?” Asher wiped his brow with a handkerchief, his eyes narrowing as he engraved mazework down the shaft of an arrow.
I paused, considering. “Maybe. Not that they’d tell us anything.”
Galen boomed a laugh beside me, the sound momentarily drowning out the clang of metal. “Ae, true! But I’ll take the business.” He washed his face with a thick rag, his weathered face creased with a smile. “Soon it seems you boys will have your own families to support. Maybe it’s time to stop working with your taam. There’s little room in this shop for you to train apprentices, and someday your children. We could repurpose Tamon’s grandfather’s old restaurant next door. It has the ventilation system built already—”
“Taam,” Asher whispered over Galen, his voice strained. He cast a worried glance at me, and I smiled as I hammered another hilt together. Galen had peppered comments like this our way for days, clearly excited by the fact that we’d invited someone outside the militia over to share a meal. By Chaeten standards, this meant nothing. To an Asri elder, he probably expected one of us to request a marriage blessing within a few weeks. The Asri move fast and marry young, even if that was no future I envisioned for myself anytime soon.
There were many things I’d learned to appreciate about life among the Asri, but their take on relationships was something I never thought I’d wrap my head around. To do things by Galen’s standards, we’d both approach a town elder sometime within the next few years and ask them to match us off. We’d give the elder basic hard criteria regarding personality, body type, occupation—or gender, in Ash’s case. They’d work with elders in other villages and do the rest.
Some Asri had a person in mind and just asked for the elder’s blessing, but most walked in blind. A date or a dance was enough for an Asri to reject someone from their short list. A few weeks at most was the typical length of a successful courtship. I found all that insane.
Crazier still, everything moved forward only if the elders agreed. If you suggested a match to an elder and they thought you misaligned on long-term goals or something else, they’d refuse the match, and tell you why. But if you got their blessing, you went before the ancestors of Oria next, committing to a life of mutual monogamy, with the ideal being multiple lives.
Then there was their take on sex. It wasn’t polite to talk about it, ever. Plato and I had fucked for a month in our bonus weekend practices. He never told a soul we were ever more than friends, insisting I do the same.
I’d been the one to lose interest first. I always fell short on whatever the Asri have going on in their heads. Plato was a sweet guy, but silence with him felt empty when we weren’t sparring or fucking, and he wanted more than I could give. He’d still have married me if I gave him any hope, so I’d cut it off.
I’d always said something non-committal whenever Galen asked me when I’d be ready for the elders. I knew he believed I’d mature and see things his way in time. He gave me a thin metaphor about a child who might need a few snacks before dinner but at some point would learn to sit down, waiting for the host before dipping his fingers in the dessert. I would do anything to fend off a similar lecture.
“You’re slowing down, old man,” I told Galen. “It would be cruel if we started our own shop and left you all this work, na?”
The Asri accent sold it. He laughed and shook his head at me.
“Well, as an old man, I suppose I should rest my arthritic bones and draw up an order for more steel.” With that, he hung up his hammer, grabbed some papers, and hustled up the stairs.
I tried to catch Asher’s eye as he bent forward again under his lamp, the light filtering through the highlights in his curled hair as he squinted at the etching pen.
“We’re behind, Brother,” Ash said. “If you start the first folds on the next batch, I’ll switch gears in a few minutes.”
I sighed, picking up the metal with my tongs and bringing it to the fire. “Ash,” I said in a low voice as the metal settled in the coals. “Don’t tell Taam, but—” I set down my tongs with a clatter that echoed in the sudden quiet of the forge.
He looked at me sidelong, gripping the edge of the desk.
“Mahakal. Don’t mention Mahakal until I figure it out.”
A frown creased Asher’s brow as he let out a breath. “Not what I was expecting you to say.”
“What were you expecting?”
Asher’s face sharpened. “Doesn’t matter. What exactly did Mahakal offer you?”
I told him everything.
He crossed his arms. “I said he failed my dahn check. Why even consider it?”
I bristled. “He invited me to his unit, not his bed. Okay, well—he’s interested, but I don’t think it’s connected. It’s my SBO immunity he wants.”
Ash reddened, and he looked back at his engraving. “I don’t trust him—when it comes to you.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think he’d always throw off your dahn the minute he saw me as a soldier. For that, he has to see me as a tool, a game piece he may need to sacrifice in battle. That’s his job.”
Asher sighed up at the ceiling. “I guess that makes sense.”
I leaned back on Ash’s table. “He has to think like that to be effective.”
