Page 16 of Red Demon
I stayed perched in my leafy aerie a few minutes more, the lingering rain beading on my face. Then I scuttled down to get my camp in order, vowing to get back into town as fast as I could.
Mist dampened my cloak when I reached the gate. Chestnuts made up the bulk of my offerings for the day, supplemented by a few morels and strawberries. The gooseberries hadn’t garnered any sales yesterday, so I hadn’t bothered to harvest them again.
I took a turn down another muddy street, dodging out of the way of a loaded horse cart. Then I smelled something I recognized—fire and steel, like the buildings around the mine. I kept walking, passing a woman hunched over a food stall, the scent of roasted flatbread and spicy lentil curry battling the damp air. I approached, drawn by the flickering warmth and the covered pagoda where others sat to eat out of the rain.
“Looks like the weather got the best of you, boy,” she said.
“Ae,” I agreed in Asri. “Not snow, at least.” I fished out some coin for lunch. I wasn’t planning on buying anything, but that curry smelled so much better than the thought of more berries or chestnuts—which I’d burned more than roasted for my breakfast that morning.
She chuckled, a friendly sound that stopped as she took in the state of my clothes when I swept my cloak back to stash my wallet. I’d been wearing the same coat underneath since the day I left Iden, and there was some grime and dirt that I’d never managed to scrub out. I didn’t meet her eyes as she passed the ceramic bowl over her stall.
“Are you looking for work, friend?” Her eyes flickered down the street. Smoke billowed from a chimney at the end of the street, a gray plume against the storm-wracked sky. “That forge is looking for a hand, I know. And there are a few farms on the edge of Nunbiren that might take you.”
Nunbiren: the town name. The ceramic bowl of curry warmed my fingers.
“Thank you,” I mumbled. I hadn’t considered that any Asri town would allow a Chaeten stray to stick around. But I thought of Asher, and let myself feel the warmth of that woman’s smile as she formed more flat loaves to cook over her fire.
When I finished my meal, I turned toward the blacksmith’s shop. It was worth a shot. I needed to move beyond surviving, find some stability to have any hope of facing the Red Demon someday.
The forge door opened with a ring of a bell, blasting me with a wave of warm, dry air. When was the last time I was this warm? I already didn’t want to leave.
Pushing past the threshold, I saw two rooms. To the right: a clean storefront with simple tools and weapons hanging in bins and baskets along the walls. To the left was the workshop, a huge glimmering machine at the center. I’d never seen tech quite like it, but the Chaeten workmanship was unmistakable. Wait, was that Asher? Serendipity had the audacity to creep in.
Asher didn’t look up. He hunched beside the Chaeten machine, near pipes that fed up to a vent along the ceiling, a display with lights pulsing on a dashboard. Molten metal glowed red between thick, tempered glass panels as Asher pushed a button to open the machine’s doors. He removed metal rods with tongs, taking them out to vise and twist them on a table with a simple crank.
He measured the hilt and set it beside a grip he looked ready to affix by hand. That seemed inefficient to me if they had electricity. I supposed even with Chaeten tech, the Asri were going to find ways to be Asri.
Asher’s father emerged from the back storeroom with a Z’har soldier flanking him. I recognized the Asri Lieutenant I met yesterday, Ren, clad in a red Chaeten leather uniform. She examined a gleaming blade on the far side of the shop, her brows furrowed as Asher’s dad explained something to do with density and well, numbers. There were numbers involved, but some of the Asri speech was too fast for me to follow.
“The Major is very pleased with the last shipment, Galen,” Ren said. “He wanted me to ensure you could maintain the same precision if we double the next order?”
Galen’s eyes brightened. “Of course. All work is our best work in this shop.”
Galen glanced toward me, and I held his gaze. His eyes narrowed beneath the forge’s fiery glow.
“Great, we’ll send the order through the temple,” Ren said, doing a double-take when she saw me. She raised her eyebrows and smiled, but said nothing as she walked out.
Galen watched me with the corner of his eye. “Can I help you?” Galen asked in fluent Chaeten, his voice gruff.
My throat tightened. I felt ridiculous and out of place under Galen’s stern gaze. “I heard your forge is hiring?”
Galen’s eyes narrowed, his hand gripping the front counter. “Who told you that?”
“The woman across the street, the one who makes the lentil curry.”
“Juna,” Galen said, his face a mask. “That’s her name.”
Shame burned in my cheeks. Why didn’t I ask her name? “I’m strong, a hard worker, and I know a little about Chaeten tech. And—” I faltered, unsure how much to reveal, or even how much was true. I’d wanted to be an engineer like Oren not so long ago, so I knew a bit here and there. Most of the classes we took in school prepared us for the mine. Maybe some of that transferred. As soon as we all learned to read, we had chemistry and math problems about isolating metal from ore, purifying the best alloys.
But would it be safe to tell him I came from a mining colony in the Bend? Asher told me to tell no one. Did that include his dad?
His gaze bored into me, searching for something. I’m not sure what. The forge machine whirred. I listened to the rhythmic clang of metal.
“Which unit sent you?” Galen said, voice abrupt.
“I don’t understand.”
He crossed his broad arms across his chest, pacing the room. “A Chaeten stranger walks into my shop. But there’s no such thing as strangers, or coincidences, when we are the only shop left for kilometers working orders for the North Barrack. You are no stranger, na?”
