Chapter 55

Luke woke up to find Zea practically lying on top of him and snoring softly. It wasn’t possible to slide out of bed without moving her, but, well, he really needed to pee. She groaned softly when he relocated her, cracked one eye open to glare at him, then shot up right, her eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

“You… and I… we didn’t…” she trailed off.

Luke laughed softly and shook his head. “Nothing like that. Your dignity is safe.”

She threw the pillow at his head. Luke let it bounce off his face before he stood up. His injuries had continued to heal at a tremendous rate throughout the night, so much so that he didn’t think he needed another [Life Surge] now.

“You look better,” she said. “Still hurting?”

“I wouldn’t want to go another round with Kalishka right now, but I could handle some light exercise.”

Zea’s cheeks flushed and she looked away. “Ah, hrmm, well, that’s good. Maybe you’ll be ready for a fight this evening. That’s the only ‘light exercise’ you’re getting.”

It took Luke’s brain a second to catch up. “You know, you keep protesting like this, I’m going to start to wonder.”

“Please. Man Human-woman dwifkin pairings never work out. You’d split me in half.”

Now it was Luke’s turn to blush. He’d been joking, and hadn’t expected anything other than the pillow chucked at his head again. “I, uh, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “But you’re right… you’re a little bit too small for my tastes.”

“Right. Exactly. The logistics don’t work out. So let’s talk about something else please.”

“Right.”

Neither of them looked at each other, and neither of them said anything. Luke scratched the back of his head and glanced over at the shuttered window. It was just a little bit past dawn, probably too early for anything to be open yet. He could maybe find a bakery or something and grab breakfast. Despite all the food he’d put away, he was still hungry from all the regenerating he’d done last night.

“You want to get breakfast? Then after I have an order for a custom weapon that’s still a few days away from being finished I want to check up on today,” Luke said. “I might see if a bit of coin can get it done faster. I feel like it would be better if I had it with me just in case something happens.”

There were plenty of people who walked around armed, though it was admittedly in the minority. It might make him stand out a little bit, but he didn’t think it would draw that much attention. He’d just be one more of the maybe ten or fifteen percent of non-cop people walking around with some kind of weapon.

Zea started to answer, interrupted herself with a yawn, and said, “It’s too early for breakfast. Maybe in an hour or two. And stop pacing back and forth. You’re making me agitated just watching you.”

He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. “Sorry,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Just stress, I think. You’re right, I haven’t been making good decisions. That needs to change.”

Zea crawled across the bed and plopped down on his lap. “Shut it,” she said before Luke could comment. “I’m cold again.”

“My fault for letting all the heat out.”

“Yeah, it was.”

Luke moved backwards so that his back was resting against the wall, then pulled the blanket up over them. His high stamina helped him ignore it, but it really was kind of cold that early in the morning. There was no furnace pumping warm air into the room or fireplace. The window didn’t even have glass. It was just wooden shutters latched closed but with gaps around the edges that let in the early morning light.

Zea didn’t have his stats. If he didn’t miss his guess, she was maybe level 10 or 11. It was no wonder she was so cold. He wondered how she’d survived the cold nights on the streets. It must have been a miserable experience for her. He wrapped his arms around her, felt her momentarily stiffen at the movement, then relax against him again.

“You’re warm,” she murmured softly. “Good for something after all.”

“That’s me,” Luke said, “human furnace, amateur fighter, and abomination in the eyes of the gods.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

Luke smiled, but there was still one problem: he still really needed to piss.

“So… don’t yell at me, but…”

* * *

Luke ended up going out for food on his own, but he brought enough back to share. It turned out that freshly-baked and still-warm bread was a much better meal than he’d expected, though he was willing to admit that after a month of relying on his own cooking abilities, almost anything tasted good by comparison. Zea’s only complaint was cleaning the crumbs out of the bed.

“You think that weapon place will be open this early?” Luke said.

“Maybe. I guess it doesn’t hurt to go by and find out. I’ll go over to the Harbor and see if Sideon can fit you in for a lunch fight. Think you can meet me there around noon?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Zea looked him up and down and said, “You sure you’re ready to fight again? Nobody would blame you for taking a day or two off.”

“As long as it’s not someone at the top of the rankings, I should be fine,” Luke said.

“Alright. I’ll tell him you want an easy match, maybe against a first timer. It won’t pay much, but better than nothing. And Luke, stay away from the church girl. She’s trouble. I mean it.”

“Why, Zea? Are you jealous?”

Zea hopped to her feet, grabbed Luke’s collar, and jerked him around to face her. “This isn’t a joke. I don’t need you getting yourself killed or dragging me along with you.”

That was probably the worst part of it. If Luke was captured and killed, there was a chance that all of his new friends and coworkers would get dragged into it too. He tried not to spend too much time thinking about that, but it was one of the reasons he wanted to put a rush on his new mace, and one of the reasons he was considering leaving Valtira on foot instead of by boat.

Her face was inches away from his, her eyes hard and glaring at him. “Tell me that you understand it’s not a joke, that they are deadly serious about hunting down and killing apostates.”

“I understand,” he said. He looked her in the eyes and tried not to think about how close she was. Damn [Peripheral Awareness] anyway for making it so easy to see her lips.

She growled, then pulled him forward into a kiss. His eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t fight her. “And I’m not jealous,” she said as she let him go.

“I…but… you said… with the splitting apart,” he stammered.

“Well not from that, idiot!”

“Right, uh, yeah. I knew that.”

“Go run your errands. Meet me at the Harbor around noon.”

Luke left Zea behind in the room. He was equal parts confused and excited. All he could think about was that she was much curvier than he’d expected underneath the human-sized clothes she wore, and how much he enjoyed how feisty she was.

* * *

Luke needed to stop and ask for directions twice to find Donaley’s again, but he did eventually make his way to the shop. Donaley’s Alchemical Blacksmithing was just as he remembered it, with one notable exception. Pips was nowhere to be found, which was just fine by Luke. That thing was annoying anyway. He still hadn’t figured out what exactly Pips was either.

“Donaley?” Luke called out from the showroom floor. “Your front door was unlocked. I hope you’re here.”

“In the back,” Donaley yelled. “Come on back, just mind your step.”

Luke pushed through the door behind the counter and found himself in a workshop of some kind, except all the tables were filled with glassworks instead of tools. The back end looked more like what he expected a smithy to look like, only with some sort of weird apparatus suspended over the anvil.

Donaley stood at it, holding a dagger made of some shiny material that glowed blue with a pair of tongs. The apparatus hanging overhead dribbled a liquid, also glowing blow, one drop at a time while Donaley moved it around. With each drop, he ran some sort of stone across the length of the blade, then flipped it so the next drop splashed onto the other side.

“Sorry, you caught me at a bad time. I can’t stop in the middle of this process or it’ll ruin the whole thing. You had the blood silver core mace, right? The one braided with living steel?”

“That’s me,” Luke said. “I’m just checking to see how much longer until it’s ready.”

Donaley shrugged with one shoulder. The other one held the dagger steady with the tongs. “Two days, at least. Maybe three.”

“Any way I can speed that up?” Luke said.

The smith glanced up from his work and grinned at Luke. “Sure, if you got the extra gold to spend. I’d also need the rest of the order up front.”

“I still owe you seven. Call it eight if you can have it ready tomorrow?”

“Deal. Just put the money on that bench over there. I’ll get started on the core bonding for your piece as soon as I’m done with this one.”

Luke counted the coins out, pressing each one down hard enough to clink so Donaley could hear it. “So, what’s special about the dagger?” he asked.

“Ever sharp,” the smith said. “Won’t rust, won’t shatter. Good hunting knife, not bad for defending yourself either. You interested?”

“You’re not making it for somebody?” Luke asked, surprised.

“Nah, this is a showroom piece. They sell pretty fast. People like them because a good knife is always handy, and one that you don’t have to do any maintenance on is even better. There’s four more out on the floor right now. I make them in my spare time when I’m waiting for something to cure but don’t have time to do a big project.”

“Huh, that’s cool. How much?”

“Eight silver, nine if you want a sheath with it,” Donaley said without hesitation.

Luke could make the sheath himself, but he didn’t have the tools or materials for it. He did still have the knife he’d taken from Curt’s workshop though. “Hmm… you ever figure anything out from that mace I traded you?”

“Little bit, yeah. It was pretty damaged, but still, clever the way the steel was made. Why?”

“I’ve got a hunting knife already that was made the same way. I’m not sure how it compares to what you’re making now.”

Donaley turned the blade over again and wiped another dab of the blue liquid across it with the stone. “It’s an interesting forging technique, never seen anything exactly like that. Good steel, but there’s no comparison between that and something that’s been alchemically treated. Now, if you wanted me to upgrade that knife with this same treatment, I could do that for four silver.”

“How long does that process take?” Luke asked.

“Twenty minutes, unless a nosy customer won’t stop asking me questions.”

Luke’s biggest concern with handing over the knife would be that he’d be down to precisely zero weapons if he walked out of the shop without it. He could stand to wait twenty minutes though. Counting out four more silver next to the gold he’d already put on the counter, he said, “Let’s do it. I’ll just stay out of your way. You mind if I wait in the show room until he’s done?”

“You want it right now? Yeah, fine. Give me half an hour. Got to finish this one first.”

Luke stepped back out of the workshop and looked around the showroom. It was kind of crap security, to just have the door unlocked and nobody watching it. It was a wonder no one had robbed him yet.

“Oh hi, you’re back!” Pips said, popping up from behind a stand that Luke could have sworn there was no room behind. “Are you here for another weapon? What is it this time? A sword maybe? Everyone looks fashionable with a good sword.”

Luke groaned. It was going to be a long half an hour.